


Qualia

by Liquid_Lyrium



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Accidental Voyeurism, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ancient Rome, Angel Healing, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Autistic Aziraphale (Good Omens), Awkward Boners, Aziraphale Has Self-Esteem Issues (Good Omens), Aziraphale Saves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Aziraphale watches Crowley eat, Babylon, Bathing/Washing, Blood and Violence, Body Horror, Caretaking, Crowley Has Self-Esteem Issues (Good Omens), Emotionally Repressed, Emotionally Significant Furniture, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Hair Braiding, Hair Washing, Healing, Historical References, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Making an Effort (Good Omens), Masturbation, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Philosophical Bullshit, Post-Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens), Post-Scene: Rome 41 AD (Good Omens), Post-Scene: St James's Park 1862 (Good Omens), Repressed Aziraphale (Good Omens), Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens), Scene: Garden of Eden (Good Omens), Scene: St James's Park 1862 (Good Omens), Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Worth Issues, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), The Arrangement (Good Omens), Voyeurism, mild body horror, sad wanking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:14:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 49,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21656584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liquid_Lyrium/pseuds/Liquid_Lyrium
Summary: Crawley scoffs. “The way I see it, things work out in one of three ways. One: Occult beings like us are exempt from the whole soulmate nonsense and can’t see colors.”“I’m ethereal, thank you,” Aziraphale interjects softly.The serpent continues as though he hasn’t been interrupted. “Two: Occult beings like us are exempt from the whole soulmate nonsense and we can see colors. Or three-” the demon stops short.“Three?” Aziraphale asks after a few moments of silence.“What does it matter anyway?” Crawley looks up at the canopy of Aziraphale’s wing.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 117
Kudos: 174





	1. Acataleptic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phoenix_of_Athena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenix_of_Athena/gifts).



> This idea spawned on the Ineffable Tumblr Mafia discord from Phoenix_of_Athena positing a Soulmate AU where you're colorblind until meeting/touching your soulmate! I just looked at the proposed idea from the reverse angle. Hope ya'll enjoy more of my philosophical bullshit and (hopefully) unconventional take on soulmates.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale has always seen the Earth in color.

It's a sorry thing to be kicked out of Eden. The sky and sand outside the walls blend into each other with the rolling storm clouds approaching. Nigh indistinguishable from the blinding lights of Heaven. Monochromatic. Adam and Eve and the flicker of a flaming sword are the only disturbance against the scenery that marks this as Earth instead of Heaven.And then the spill of blood on sand as Adam cleaves his sword into the lion’s mane. Bright and vivid as the skin of a forbidden apple. 

The only source of color as far as the eye can see, aside from Eden.

The names of colors are a secret knowledge still. Aziraphale heard Adam and Eve name many things, but Adam murmured the colors so quietly and tenderly in Eve’s ear the angel couldn’t catch any. Eve named many things, but Aziraphale can’t be sure if she ever named a color. _Does she even see colors?_ Adam certainly must. He’s named them, held the names close to his heart, and he had three wives. The nameless one made from nothing that he sent away, Lilith next made of clay, and then Eve flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. Surely one of them was his soulmate, had gifted him the sight.

Aziraphale vaguely recalls overhearing snatches of conversation in Heaven. Part of the great design the creationary choirs were given access to. Not something meant for principalities to concern themselves with. An evolutionary tic, designed to help suitable mates find each other. Encourage humans to congregate and build their lives around one another and, in turn, the Almighty’s universe. There could be one soulmate or several in a person’s life. Even none at all. It was just a marker of compatibility, in the end.

Aziraphale has always seen the Earth in color.

He looks down as he hears a noise. He sees a great, limbless reptile accompany the sound of scales on stone. As dark as his robes are light, but the scales on his belly are the same as the blood on the sand. As fruit skin. As a warning. Then the being shifts and he’s clad in a set of dark robes and dark wings. His hair like apple-skins, no, a little closer to the burning, flaming sword. His iron-forge hair glows in the sun at the edges. Almost painful against the leaves of the garden in the distance. Aziraphale hasn’t seen anything quite like those eyes before. The closest thing he can think of is lemons and their skins laid out to dry in the sun.

 _What a fascinating creature_.

Technically, the creature is a demon, and is more than a little responsible for the whole business of the humans being hastily escorted out of this little slice of paradise, so the angel should want nothing more than to smite him, or at least give him a good shove off the wall—but Aziraphale can’t help but be captivated by the mixture of colors he’s never seen poured together all in the same being before. Pomegranate arils clinging to the pale rib hollows made for them, sun-soaked rinds and night-dark raiments, space-void feathers.

“Well that went down like a lead balloon.”

Aziraphale chuckles nervously, despite not understanding. “Sorry, what was that?”

The demon turns towards him, and Aziraphale had the distressing thought that perhaps the other formerly-celestial being hadn’t actually been talking to him at all. (It had occurred far too often in Heaven.) The audacity to assume that this… this.. adversary was speaking to him!

Just as Aziraphale is about to apologize for his mistake, the demon turns towards him and repeats firmly, “I said ‘Well that went down like a lead balloon.’”

Aziraphale has no idea what a lead balloon is, or what that even means, but he’s so grateful that for once someone actually _intends_ to be talking to him. That he hasn’t made another mistake. (And oh, hasn’t he made enough mistakes today to last the rest of his eternal life?)

“Yes, yes it did, rather.” He hopes that’s the right response. It’s all a bit bewildering still.

“Bit of an overreaction if you ask me. First offence and everything.” The demon leans in, lowering his voice and Aziraphale leans in for a moment before pulling himself back. Musn’t let himself get drawn in. “I can’t see what’s so bad about knowing the difference between Good and Evil anyway.”

“Well. it must _be_ bad…” Aziraphale stops short. He doesn’t recognize this demon at all. No name to put to a face. _Did I know him when he was an angel? Would it be rude to call him by his old name even if I did? Probably isn’t an -el or -iel anymore what with not being in Her presence or favour._

“Crawley,” the demon helpfully supplies with a smile and a paticular nod of his head that makes Aziraphale’s insides go all twisty. (He hopes there isn’t anything wrong with his corporation. It’s practically new. Maybe angels aren’t meant to consume gross matter.)

“...Crawley.” The name settles on his tongue. It’s nice. He’s never heard another name like it. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have tempted them into it.”

The serpent just shakes his head and scoffs at his involvement in the whole affair, “Oh they just said ‘get up there and make some trouble.’”

“Well, obviously. You’re a demon.” It’s a desperate attempt to remind himself that this creature is The Enemy. All capital letters and everything! He was explicitly told what to do with his sort only… only.. well, it would be rather rude to try and smite someone in the middle of polite conversation. And he is rather short one instrument of war. “That’s what you do.”

“Not very subtle of the Almighty, though. Fruit tree in the middle of a garden with a Don’t Touch sign on it? Bit of a charade, really. I mean, why not put it on top of a very high mountain? Or on the moon?” Aziraphale can’t help but look up, even though the sky is clouded over. Dark covering the ever-bright and clear portion of it that reminds Aziraphale of some of the flowers in the garden. _Why not indeed?_ “Makes you wonder what God’s really planning.”

“Best not to speculate.” Aziraphale has been well forewarned against curiosity. Curiosity leads directly to Temptation. “It’s all part of The Great plan. It’s not for us to understand.” _Trust. Faith. That’s what you’re for, Aziraphale._ How to describe faith to one who has rejected it? In terms that won’t seem offensive? Aziraphale licks his lips. He can smell water in the air. Heavy. Almost tangible. How odd. “It’s.. ineffable,” he finally lands on.

“The Great Plan’s ineffable?” The demon’s tone hovers on the edge of suggesting that is the _stupidest_ thing he’s ever heard. _Well, demons aren’t known for their love of the Almighty’s plans._

“Exactly, it’s beyond understanding and incapable of being put into words,” he tries not to sound smug, but it’s a difficult thing, as he’s holding onto a secret of the universe and showing it off. Even if his audience is unappreciative.

“Didn’t you have a flaming sword?” The question catches Aziraphale off guard, as much as the sudden scrutiny from the demon. _Suppose he thought it more polite to change the subject than debate the merits of The Great Plan._

“Uh.” This thought does not help Aziraphale at present, because he would much rather debate and argue the merits of The Great Plan with someone who is diametrically opposed to it than discuss the whereabouts of his flaming sword.

“You _did._ It was flaming like anything! What happened to it?” The demon sounds more certain now. Aziraphale isn’t certain what he should say.

“Er-” and just like that, Aziraphale has invented hesitation markers and filler words.

“Lost it already have you?” The demon has a knowing tone. Too familiar. Smug. It slides under Aziraphale’s skin, and it still feels slightly better than the disapproving superiority from his fellows.

He looks down at his hands, unable to withhold the truth. “Gaveitaway,” Aziraphale says it quickly. Hoping it will hurt less. Even though the demon, technically, has no authority over him.

“You what!?”

For the briefest, barest moment, Aziraphale is almost leveled by the sensation of nausea—like he’s gorged himself on too many berries—and a hammer striking an anvil, showering sparks everywhere. It’s washed away by a flood of shame, and his stomach twists down tighter on itself like a spiraling snail shell the color of river rocks and a sickly plant he’d seen in the garden’s shadows. He only realizes he felt the other thing as the shame seeps through down to his toes.

“I gave it away!” If only he’d been issued a shield instead of a sword (or at least one to go with it) he could hide his shame. Still, Aziraphale certainly isn’t going to degrade his dignity any further by hiding behind his wings in the absence of a shield. The demon is dumbstruck, mouth agape. Those sun-dried eyes wide and unblinking. Aziraphale isn’t sure what to make of the expression, and he finds himself babbling on, “There are vicious animals, and it’s cold out there! And she’s expecting already. And I said ‘Here you go, flaming sword. Don’t thank me. And don’t let the sun go down on you here.’” Aziraphale looks out over the desert and the ever-darkening sky. “I do hope I didn’t do the wrong thing.”

“Oh you’re an angel, I don’t think you can do the wrong thing,” the demon shifts his jaw just so as he meets the angel’s gaze, and just like that, all the shame and anxiety roiling inside Aziraphale’s marrow drains away.

“O-oh! _Oh,_ thank you.” _How kind._ Aziraphale has never experienced relief before. It’s an arresting sensation. His limbs feel weaker than they ever did after centuries of martial training, and he has a distinctly light-headed feeling. _How wonderful._ “It’s been bothering me.” _How did you ever become a demon?_ He stares at Crawley in wonder.

“I’ve been worrying too.” Crawley stares out at the humans on the horizon. An exile from paradise looking on exiles from paradise. A dizzying recursion Aziraphale isn’t sure anyone was expecting at the outset of Creation. “What if I did the right thing with the whole ‘eat the apple’ business? A demon can get into a lot of trouble for doing the right thing.”

“Be funny if we both got it wrong, eh? If I did the good thing and you did the bad one?” The demon chuckles lightly, his smile a fluttering, nervous thing. As if he's not sure it's allowed.

Aziraphale chuckles as well, equally nervous. Equally unsure if this is allowed. Demons are supposed to be about eternal torment. Is it acceptable to encourage this. To take part and share in it? Yet once it starts the laughter comes a little easier, and Aziraphale feels that sweet shaky, new-leaf sensation of relief. They’re on equal footing here at the start of … whatever comes next. They laugh together, Aziraphale just a little too loud. _We’re in the same pea pod, I suppose._

It’s the thought that they’re the same—that _he’s_ the same as a demon—that instantly sobers the angel. As if struck by the blinding star-flash of heat spidering across the sky. A roll of sound follows after, and it shakes the bones in the angel’s corporation.

“No! It wouldn’t be funny at all.” A mouse-like thing gnaws at Aziraphale’s gut. He twists the ring around his finger. As if he can give that feeling somewhere else to go.

"Well," the ' _I tried my best'_ remains unspoken. Crawley turns his not quite tree-sap eyes towards the desert.

The sky flashes again, and the wave of sound is closer this time. Vibrating through his chest and skull. Instinctively, Aziraphale lifts his wing as he looks up. He only realizes a moment later that he’s sheltered The Enemy when he feels droplets of water land on his face and bounce off his wing. He is quite certain a better angel would have noticed when The Enemy had shuffled closer. _Oh. I probably wasn’t supposed to do that._ It seems that today is all about doing things he isn’t supposed to do. _Oh dear. Well, I can’t just expose him to the elements now. Would be terribly rude and unsporting. No point in both of us being wet._

The sky opens up further, and Aziraphale is gratified that his sword is still burning, in spite of it. Everything gets darker, almost as if it is night. _Water conquering the sun? Is it really possible? Surely the Almighty doesn’t mean to leave them in darkness forever._ He can just barely see the blood still clinging to the sand in the glimmer of light his sword throws off.

Perhaps it was not allowed, not what he was supposed to do, but Aziraphale feels very glad he gave the sword way—regardless of if it was right or wrong.

They stand and watch the pair of humans in silence for a little while. Crawley seems reasonably dry, under his wing, but Aziraphale quickly finds out there’s nothing he can do about the sound, and he has to trust and have faith that their forms won’t shatter apart as it gets louder and closer.

Aziraphale glances sidelong at the demon. He’s not _supposed_ to be curious, but surely… gathering information on one of The Fallen is a good thing to do.

“So… uh.. Interesting form you were wearing earlier. Uh seems an excellent disguise. It must be why I never noticed you before.” _Please let it be that and not my own incompetence._

The demon hums noncommittally, the sound of it almost swallowed by the rain pelting against his primaries.

“I don’t recall very many angels taking the form of animals before. Bits and pieces of us made it into some of the designs, of course but… obviously it’s not the same. For starters, most of the Almighty’s creatures only have one head!” Aziraphale chuckles nervously, twisting his ring.

“Saw a two-headed one the other day,” Crawley shoves his hands up his sleeves.

“What!?”

“Yeah, down by the southern pond. Poor bugger… Wossit called? Think they were calling it a turtle? Tiny bloke. Two heads stuffed into that little shell. Thought I’d gone a bit cross-eyed at first, but nope. One very odd, dare I say _imperfect_ aberration within the Great Plan. Wonder how he’ll do, outside the garden.” A stricken look crosses Crawley’s features before he schools his face back into a stern frown.

 _And what about Adam and Eve? Did you think of how the humans would fare outside the garden!?_ Aziraphale bites down the harsh words, his wing holding steady. He sees the warping of creation again. An exile looking down on exiles. Though… technically, two humans were already banished before the day’s incidents. Banished by their own kind. He feels his anger bleed away. _Maybe it’s fairer this way._

“If you show me where it is, perhaps I can give it a blessing?” _Rather out of swords to give away._

Crawley lifts a brow and tilts his head, considering the angel like he’s… Aziraphale isn’t quite sure what. Like he’s a dreadfully complicated web of creation (which, at his core, he is) or something ineffably mystifying thing that the demon is determined to solve.

“Yeah, sure, alright then.”

The demon’s eyes seem so much brighter with the sun blotted out by the sky. There’s another white-hot flash and for the briefest instant, Crawley is awash in ore-bright light, his pupils the thinnest, barely-there slit of black against edgeless color. Aziraphale opens his mouth, but he jumps as the painful crack of sound follows almost instantly. He can hear it echo for miles. Like something tearing the atmosphere.

“Oh, sorry, did you get wet?”

Crawley wrinkles his nose. “Just a bit. ‘S fine. Fuck this noise, honestly.” He pulls a hand out of his sleeve and gestures vaguely at the sky and horizon. “Worst idea since horses.”

“What’s so bad about horses?” Aziraphale supposes most of the animals will wait until the storm is over to leave the garden now.

“Mm,” it’s a tone that somehow sounds like ‘You’ll see.’ “Don’t like ‘em. Well, they don’t like me. In either shape.”

“Oh! Yes! I was going to ask a question, but then I got distracted.”

“Yeah, and I changed the subject, but alright then. Go on,” Crawley grins and it isn’t… it doesn’t seem _kind_ , but it isn’t… _bad_ either. Exactly. It’s sharp (and only a little wicked) but Aziraphale isn’t afraid of sharp things. He was made to hold them, to wield and use them perfectly. “Let’s see the sort of questions they’re asking in Heaven these days.”

“Technically we’re on Earth right now, you know.” Aziraphale glances down at the torrent of rain pooling at their feet, cresting and falling back into the garden like a waterfall.

Crawley just rolls his eyes. “Just ask.”

“I only meant to ask, er, were you always able to take that form? I mean… before?”

The easygoing demon from before is replaced with someone who looks more like The Enemy Aziraphale has been told about. “No. Technically, yes, suppose I could have. Wouldn’t have occurred to me. Nah. One of the perks of the new job, I guess you could say.” There’s a twist to his mouth and bitterness to his voice.

“I’m not terribly good at shapeshifting,” Aziraphale admits. “I’m not certain I could do it even if I wanted to.”

“Why would you _want_ to?” Crawley’s face is screwed up, like Aziraphale has started speaking in tongues.

“It seems like a useful ability to have, and, well, it’s a very lovely form.” One is almost certainly _not_ supposed to compliment the very avatar of demonic manifestation of one’s adversary, but Aziraphale has done just that. Crawley blinks, and jerks his head back, a sort of surprise on his face. “I, er, imagine the lack of limbs is a bit inconvenient, but it must have other advantages. Doesn’t seem to impede your ability to climb and get into off-limits places at the very least. What do they call it?”

“Serpent,” Crawley says sounding like he’s not altogether present. He’s pressed the tips of his fingers against his brow.

“Ah! Serpent, yes, I think I do recall them discussing you. Did you, er, have a hand in any animal creation? You seem to be rather knowledgeable about them.”

“I didn’t make animals.” Crawley says the words flatly, hand dropping to his side. There’s enough weight behind them that Aziraphale wouldn’t have pushed the subject even without the next flash-boom-rumble from above making it positively terrifying.

“My apologies,” Aziraphale whispers as soon as the storm has had its say.

Crawley shrugs with one shoulder. Black wings following the motion. “You’re an odd duck, aren’t you?” The serpent looks out at the speck of fire in the desert.

“How do you mean?” _I thought we established I’m not much of a shapeshifter._ Aziraphale twists his ring again. It probably isn’t a good sign if a demon recognizes that he’s a less than sterling example of an angel.

“Apologizing to a demon… chatting with a demon. Giving your sword away. Asking questions.” The demon glances at him sidelong, “You a secret agent or something? Double agent? Double secret agent?”

Aziraphale blinks slowly, unable to even _begin_ to formulate an answer to that question.

“Right, obviously not. Forget I said anything.”

Aziraphale wiggles his wet toes, and wonders when this whole sky-water business is going to be over.

There’s another question that burns. One he hasn’t asked another soul. “Do you, ah, that is, if it isn’t a personal question, may I ask— do you see in color?”

Crawley is quiet for several flashes of light and disturbing rumbles. Aziraphale thinks he must’ve said something wrong but then the demon suddenly answers. “No, I don't think so.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale feels a little sad. Colors have turned out to be a lovely experience. Then he pauses, “What do you mean you don’t think so? Isn’t that something you should know?”

Crawley gives him a scathing look. “How the bloody Heaven should I know? Barely remember anything about Up There. So what would I have to compare it to?”

Aziraphale considers this, and it’s a fair point. He only knows because he remembers when it happened. Well sort of. It was a bit of a blur, but he remembers Heaven before, utterly colorless. Only described by light, void, and the shades in between. Then during The Rebellion everything changed. Like water soaking through cloth. Or blood. It had taken Aziraphale quite a while to make sense of the new input.

“You see in color then?”

 _Oh_. Aziraphale hadn’t meant to reveal that much with a simple question. “Well, I thought that I might, but now that you mention it perhaps I’ve… been mistaken.”

Crawley narrows his eyes at Aziraphale, but he lets the comment stand unchallenged. “Let’s pretend, for a moment, that we _both_ see in color… how would we know? Can you describe the color of...I dunno. Pick something.”

“Your hair?” Aziraphale feels his cheeks burn underneath cool rainwater.

“Sure,” Crawley shrugs. “Go on. Describe it then.”

“Well it’s… I don’t have a name for it!”

Crawley rolls his eyes. “Call it tickety-boo if you like.”

“Well your hair is… tickety-boo.”

“Right. That tells me nothing of your experience. Try again.”

“It’s… well it reminds me of.. It looks rather like the same color as the blood of that lion a bit ago. And when the light hits it a little bit like a flaming sword, when it glows. And there are quite a few flowers in the garden that are that color.”

“Yes, but what does that _mean?_ What if I look at this,” Crawley holds up a lock of hair, “and I’m seeing a different color entirely. So let’s say… Ah. When I look at my hair, I see the color that _you_ see when looking at the leaves over there. But if I call the color of my hair tickety-boo same as you, we would have no way of knowing if we were really seeing the same color. Would we?”

“I think I may need to sit down.” Aziraphale doesn’t care much for ambiguity. Oh he can handle ineffability, but ambiguity causes stress and anxiety. There’s a difference. One has an ultimate cosmic meaning and the other doesn’t.

“Bit wet for that.” Crawley sniffs. “Anyway, you can _say_ all those things, but I’m not inside your head, looking at what you’re looking at, right? No way for either of us to know how the other sees the world. Not really.”

“Maybe, maybe soulmates see colors in the same way,” Aziraphale mumbles desperate to make any sort of sense out of this. He rather regrets the entire conversation now.

Crawley scoffs. “The way I see it, things work out in one of three ways. One: Occult beings like us are exempt from the whole soulmate nonsense and can’t see colors.”

“I’m ethereal, thank you,” Aziraphale interjects softly.

The serpent continues as though he hasn’t been interrupted. “Two: Occult beings like us are exempt from the whole soulmate nonsense and we _can_ see colors. Or three-” the demon stops short.

“Three?” Aziraphale asks after a few moments of silence.

“What does it matter anyway?” Crawley looks up at the canopy of Aziraphale’s wing. “Like I said, I haven’t got a bloody clue, but probably don’t see in color. If one is able to be certain about anything, when it comes to reality.”

The way the serpent pronounced _reality_ made it sound like it was on par with _horses_ and _The Great Plan_.

“Not a fan of reality?”

“Everything was more fun when it was just… cosmic stuff. Ethereal and occult. Boundless. Free.” Crawley pauses. “I think.”

Aziraphale can’t say anything to that. His existence does not predate reality. _Who were you?_ He keeps the question to himself. Even if Crawley remembered he probably wouldn't answer.

The angel twists the ring at his pinky, and he plucks at a now-translucent and clinging sleeve. The demon at his side draws a breath, like he’s about to ask a question, but then he thinks better of it, and wraps his wings closer around himself.

They stand in silence, until the wrath of the clouds is fully dispersed and Aziraphale has to ask himself another question.

_Why would the Almighty bother giving an angel a soulmate?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it wasn't my explicit intention to make Aziraphale autistic, but I can't exactly turn mine off so... I figured I'd just go with it! ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Anyways, I will fist-fight all of Heaven!!!
> 
> Also thank you to Frankenmouse and Phoenix_of_Athena for looking at this and helping me see past my own ineffable, personal dissatisfaction to see that this is actually a Good Chapter.
> 
> I think my actual, real-life definition of what a soulmate is differs from most people's. ~~Someone who is naturally inclined to do the pieces of the chores you leave unfinished like putting the folded laundry back in its drawer or in the closet.~~ I think a "soulmate" is really just someone who you're really, really, really compatible with. Call it 5% of Earth's population or 0.05% it still doesn't negate all the work that goes into a relationship even if that base compatibility is there. (And that doesn't mean you couldn't be happy with someone else either, just might not be as easy in some ways.)


	2. Solipsism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A garden made of love?” _There’s no such thing. Never was, and never will be._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, Hastur shows up and things get a little gnarly, but this is probably the worst in terms of graphic violence I think that this fic will have. There's some stabbing and attempted strangulation.

**[Babylon 570 BC]**

Crawley hadn’t meant to get side tracked, but how could he _not_ take a look around at the most sophisticated city in the entire fertile crescent? The gate of Ishtar and the processional way had been enough to get distracted with on their own. Their dark and dazzling walls adorned with the animals of their favorite gods are awe inspiring even to a being like Crawley. How much labor, how many millions of bricks had gone into their construction? (He does a quick estimate in his head and comes up with the number fifteen million.)

Somehow, instead of infiltrating the palace, he’s outside those glorious city walls. Across the river, standing in the shadow of something far greater.

He has seen gardens before. Humans seem to love planting things and watching them grow. Maybe it’s some kind of genetic memory, something written into their very DNA. Trying to recapture the glory of Eden. Crawley’s never seen anything that has ever come close until now.

The triple-tiered structure stands on the river, covered in plants that stand out against the pale desert sands and scrub outside the city. Each level must cover a third of an acre, and Crawley wants to shed all of his limbs and stretch himself into a single line of joints to explore all the foliage. He can see vast buckets on great chains slowly drawing water up from the river. No doubt depositing the life-giving liquid into troughs or reservoirs for further distribution.

The outer walls and pillars are similarly adorned to the great gate and processional way of the city. He has to stop at the western face. A dazzling pattern at least sixteen cubits in diameter stood out against the brick. An eight-pointed star. Ishtar’s symbol, threaded with different gradations, and further symbols surrounding it. Crawley has to hand it to humans. Even those without color vision can still craft beautiful things. The wall is the same deep color as the gate. In the very center, a rosette is defined with the same shade and hue as the animal reliefs, while the main outline of the star matches their open, hungry maws.

He hasn’t even seen the plants up close yet. Just as he decides to get a closer look, a human comes from within, and settles in the shade of the wall, pulling out a waterskin. Crawley holds perfectly still. He wasn’t prepared for a human to show up, his veils are down about his shoulders, but the locals seem to think he’s favored by Marduk-or one of his pets, so his eyes have been an asset instead of a curse. He’s honestly more embarrassed to be caught slacking by a _human_ of all things.

Crawley looks over the gentleman again and realizes he must be one of the attendants to the garden. He’s not dressed as a noble. The demon also realizes that the other is blind. He relaxes just a little and approaches.

“Good morrow,” the man says after a deep draught. Crawley grins as he realizes it’s filled with wine instead of water. A being after his own heart.

“You tend these gardens?”

“Not by myself.”

“Nice work,” Crawley gets close enough to stand beside the other and trace his fingertips over the brick.

“Thank you.”

“The wrapping is almost as pretty as the plants themselvesss.” It’s easier than usual to be effusive. There’s a little less artifice to his praise.

“So they tell me,” the man nods.

“Ah. So you’ve never-?”

“I lost my sight ages ago, great one. A plague when I was scarcely walking. I survived but my sight was taken.”

Crawley jerks his head back, pulls his fingertips back from the wall. “Great one?”

The human bows his head, lifting his hands, “Please, I mean no offense. You do not… you smell different. You sound different, you are no man, this is all I can say. Please, great one, I will keep your secret, if that is what you wish.”

His serpent tongue flicks out and tastes the air. He can taste loam and moisture, dust and riverwater but he can grudgingly admit that he also detects his own demonic aura. Perceptive humans usually fall into one of two categories. A pain in the ass or a ton of fun. Crawley hopes it’s the latter.

“Well, you are right.” Crawley smirks a bit. “I am no man.” He’s delighted in his combined presentation of feminine and masculine here. There are perks to being perceived as a favorite of Marduk.

“But the gardens please you?” There’s a bit of hesitation there, but it’s no throwing himself at Crawley’s feet in terror and gnashing his teeth, so he’ll take it.

“Yes. I see Nebuchadnezzer’s been busy since Judah and Egypt. So why the fake mountain? Trying to outdo the gods?” He let his voice take on just a hint of mockery.

“Yes, peace be to him and the kingdom, may Marduk make him flourish.” He sounds like he’s trying his best to be sincere with the usual praise demanded by local custom, but perhaps his enthusiasm is dampened by the heat. He pulls at the collar of his robe to air it out as he continues, “No offense is meant by this wonder, great one. The gardens he built for his wife, Amytis, for she hails from Media and the scenery here left her sad and homesick.”

Crawley blinks slowly. His stomach churning with something almost like revulsion. No— _dread_. “A garden made of love?” _There’s no such thing. Never was, and never will be._

“Indeed. They say the king and queen gave each other the sight of colors. There is a secret pattern on the wall only those so blessed can see.”

“Hm. Wonder what it looks like.” He traces a curious hand over the brick again. He’s never liked not knowing something.

“Ah, I apologize I cannot describe it for you, great one.”

“‘S alright.” Crawley shrugs, mildly annoyed at the sorrow in the other’s voice. The last thing he needs is _pity_ from a human which might be worse than _being a pain in the ass._ “I mean, you’ve never seen it-”

“My wife described it to me once, but alack, I can’t recall it with enough clarity to repeat it.”

“Oh?” Crawley tilts his head.

“I remember she said it is bold and _red_. A beautiful crimson appropriately passionate. Befitting the blood that Ishtar loves to spill and the rush of blood that quickens with lust.”

 _Oh? Now this is fascinating._ “Are you saying that your wife is your soulmate?”

“Aye, great one. Though I do not recall what it is like to see, I think I know red. As much as a blind man can know anything whereof he dreams that he sees.”

“What if she was lying to you? How do you know she didn’t just want to marry you?” Not that he’s exactly sure what this man has to offer that would be worth lying for.

“I admit, the thought never crossed my mind, great one, for my dreams changed and were strange after meeting her. It is she who told me the color I saw with the sun hitting the back of my eyes to be red, for it was the same with her when she closed her eyes and looked at the midday sun.”

“But what if your soulmate was somebody else, how would you _know_ it was her?” It’s probably a dick move, trying to instill doubt like this, but the impulse is baked into him like clay.

A bit of sorrow crosses his face, “Ah, I am sad to say I have the answer to this mystery, great one.” The human takes another pull from his wineskin. “She has travelled below to the Earth of No Return. My dreams are no longer as they were when we were together in life. They are as they were before our meeting and union.”

“Oh, shit,” he sinks his fangs into his lip.

“I take no offense great one,” the human takes another pull from the bottle, and he uses a minor miracle to up the potency and quality. The attendant makes a noise of surprise, but drinks a little longer regardless.

“So what is your name then? How long have you lived here?” Crawley traces his eyes over the man’s dark skin, dotted with a smattering of freckles over round cheeks. The lower half of his face is obscured by a thick, curly beard as is the fashion among men here.

“Adini, great one. I have lived here my whole life.”

“Right, well, you can knock it off with that ‘great one’ nonsense. Call me… Sirrush.” Crawley drops down in front of the other and summons up a wineskin of his own.

“Sirrush? Has Marduk sent you?”

Crawley laughs. “I’m afraid not. Just taking in the sights.” _Not sent by anyone you’d be familiar with, anyway._ “Tell me Adini, how do the gardens work? Who made the pumps that draw up the water? What powers them? Is the river, or does it need to be cranked by hand?”

A smile tugs at Adini’s lips. “You ask many questions for someone who is not human, Sirrush.”

The demon barks out a laugh, throwing back his head. _Now_ they're getting somewhere. Adini is definitely falling more on the _fun_ scale of perceptive mortals. “So I’ve been told.”

He keeps their wineskins filled, though he has to remember to make sure he doesn’t overdo it with Adini. For a moment, he wishes he knew another immortal soul he could do this with. Someone who he could get prodigiously drunk with.

He pesters Adini with question after question, but the man never refuses to answer, though he does chide him after an hour or two, “Sirrush! You are like a child, ever asking questions! Surely you have greater wisdom and knowledge than I?”

“Oh, I am very young among my kind, Adini,” he lies easily, with a grin his companion can probably hear. “And humans change so much faster than we eternal ones. There is much I am curious about. I only know useless things like what makes up the stars and how to change my shape. Nothing useful like how to brew wine, how do they do it here?”

Adini laughs drunkenly, “You should ask a vintner! I just quaff the end results, like you.”

Crawley isn’t quite sure where the time goes, but he’s vaguely aware that the sun is much lower in the sky when Adini shuffles off to piss somewhere, Crawley lies back on the ground, legs flung up along the wall. The shapes are dizzying like this. Lines that seem to go on forever. Framed by curves that might be replicating a rainbow for all he knows. _Red, huh?_ Humans had kept the names of colors secret for a long time, yet Adini spoke the name as if it were nothing. _Maybe he thought you knew. Maybe he didn’t expect you to be blind to it._

When Adini comes tottering back, settling against the wall with care, Crawley—Sirrush—asks another question.

“What was your wife’s name?”

“Darice, she was called.” That is not, Sirrush knows well, a Babylonian name. Adini seemes untroubled by this.

“Do you have children, Adini?” He’s still staring at the dizzying pattern in the wall. Legs sending too much alcohol-drenched blood to his head.

“Yes. I am so blessed.” Adini’s voice is soft. “Two daughters and three sons also.”

He’s too fucking drunk because he can feel water welling up along his lashline. _I wonder, were you a descendant of a child smuggled onto the ark? Was she?_ But he can’t ask Adini to recount two thousand four-hundred odd years of family history. He rubs a thumb along his lash line instead and rolls over, letting his legs fall with a quiet thump.

“‘S good. Good.” Adini doesn’t ask why his throat suddenly sounds so thick. “Must be why y’r so good at answering my questions. Tell me a story.” It comes out as a demand. Entitled, but Adini doesn’t call him on it.

He just takes on a soothing tone and tells him one of a thousand tales about bloody Ishtar—elsewhere called Innana—the brightest star in the sky that isn’t even a star. The Sumerians were smart, though. They figured out the Evening Star and Morning Star are the same thing, so the Babylonians know it too. At least the priests do.

Adini tells him a charming (and vulgar) tale where Ishtar used to be a virgin, ignorant of sex. So down she goes to Kur—just as Venus will disappear from the sky—to the Earth of No Return, to eat the fruit of the tree that will reveal this knowledge to her. It’s refreshingly stripped of its cosmological weight in the mouth of a commoner.

“Tell me another,” he begs.

Adini smiles, just as a father indulging his favorite might. “If I’m not too drunk, I may recall the poem of Ishtar and the choosing of her consort. Hm how does it start…? Her brother is giving her council to marry the shepherd Dumuzid. _I am a woman, and I won’t do that, I won’t! I am a star and I won’t be the wife of a shepherd!_ ”

This is another story Sirrush knows. The story of a god being asked to choose a shepherd over a farmer. Where a farmer and a shepherd quarrel over the love of a god. Where the shepherd is the one who wins out over the farmer. (Though as it turns out, in the utterly obscene epilogue, the shepherd god is good enough at plowing to satisfy Ishtar and her wet fields to be as good as a farmer.)

“‘S amazing,” Sirrush says finally, thoroughly amused by the utter lack of shame humanity has to grafting their sexuality onto their divine patrons. “How you lot keep telling yourselves the same stories over ‘n over.”

“Until our children stop asking, Sirrush.” The words curl around a smile, and he gestures obscenely before he remembers that the other can’t see it.

“You dare mock me?” He puts as much severity in his voice as he can muster while inebriated. This will be the real test of how _fun_ the human is.

“I dare,” Adini takes another swig and Sirrush laughs.

“You pass,” he says without explanation. “Tell me, does the king come here often? Does he bring his pretty wife to see his labors?”

“Not as much these days,” Adini sounds sluggish, like he’s ready to settle in for a nap behind his ever-closed eyes.

“Oh?”

“There is… talk.”

“Ohh,” he repeats knowingly. “ _Talk._ Of course.”

“It is no laughing matter for _me_ , Sirrush!” He’s taken aback by the sudden vehemence.

“Come now, Adini, my friend, my boon drinking companion of these several hours-”

“I know you will ask, please do not ask me, because I dare not refuse to answer you Sirrush.”

He feels a pout settle across his lips. “But Adini-”

“No, if I speak of it, I may not live to enjoy the end of the week.”

“No one ever has to know,” Sirrush leans over Adini’s shoulder, all but hissing into his ear. “Tell me, is there something you want? What can I give you to let me ask you this question?”

“Anything?”

“Anything,” Sirrush says, “and I will keep your words secret.”

“Tell me why you are here among men, in the greatest city under the sun.” _Well that’s a bit of a self-inflated opinion, isn’t it?_

“To make trouble,” Sirrush smiles. It’s even the truth.

“What sort of trouble?”

“Did I not answer your question to your satisfaction?”

“No.” The words are a little cold, and Sirrush feels a bit put out.

“Alright, I will, since I like you and you _are_ good to drink with. But you better not get upset when I tell you.”

“Sirrush,” the word almost sounds exasperated and the demon smiles.

“I’m here to cause trouble for the king. Just a bit of madness. Call it a ‘test’ if you like.”

Adini shifts, as though shocked. “Madness? But the king is already mad!” He claps a hand over his mouth and Sirrush sobers up immediately.

_“What!?”_

“He has imprisoned his eldest son, he pays no heed to his children. They say that family and clan are not in his heart.”

“What was his son’s charge?” _Not enough to deport and subjugate the populations you conquer anymore? You’d imprison your own offspring?_

The attendant cocks his head, listening for other footsteps. Sirrush hears nothing but the river and the movement of the chains. “Conspiracy. The charges were not… reputable, yet the king let himself be swayed by them.”

The demon shakes his head slowly. Of course, of course a human would beat him to it and go mad on his own. _The fuck am i supposed to do? Just take credit for it and move on?_

“They say his son Nabu-shuma-ukin laments in prison. 'O Marduk! Single out for harm the one who stirred up harmful talk of me! O Marduk, the artful devices of humankind, who can thwart them but you?’"

“I haven’t done any thwarting lately,” Sirrush says softly, more to himself. He wonders what’s become of the angel. He shifts his jaw, and tilts his head to consider Adini. “Would you ever imprison one of your children?”

“No Sirrush. I could not.”

“Even if they disobeyed you?” He crowds in close, trying to smell any hint of a lie.

“No Sirrush. Not for something so trivial as that.” The answer feels like a lash to his heart.

“Even if they asked you ceaseless questions?” He can feel his teeth crowd against his lips, his jaw rearranging to fit them.

“Why should I imprison them for something like that?” His eyes are burning now.

“And if they demand you tell them stories until the end of time?” His fingers grasp the dirt.

“A pleasant way to pass my golden years, then.”

“What if they tried to kill you, and take your place?” Surely there is _something!_

“Then I must have done something very wrong as a father to make them want to hurt me so.”

Crawley lets out a harsh breath, trying to force his corporation back under his control. Tries to pour himself back into the skin of Sirrush where life is much simpler and easier to get by in. _They can’t be made in your image. They’re better than the original._ He doesn’t care if the blasphemous thought gets him struck from the fabric of creation itself.

“Alright. I’ll see what I can do," Sirrush’s voice is a little too husky.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’ll figure out who did it, and make them sorry for it. Maybe break the kid out too. Wotshisname? Nabu-shuma?”

“Nabu-shuma-ukin, oh praise Marduk-”

“Hey, hey, none of that now!” He gets to his feet. “You going to be okay, getting back? You’re pretty drunk.”

Adini waves him off. “My eldest will come collect me if I do not make it home for dinner.”

His fingers twitch. While he can’t give a blessing, he can certainly curse anyone who thinks of fucking with the gardener.

“Great. Lovely talking to you. We’ll have to do this again sometime.” Sirrush leaves him with a cask full of wine as would befit a king.

—

He finally infiltrates the palace. Sirrush pulls up his veils, worn over a man’s robes and a clean-shaven face and long hair that matches the gaping, hungry mouths of the lions guarding the city’s gate. It’s an easy enough puzzle to figure out. There are only so many potential heirs to the throne. Neriglissar’s claim is the most tenuous, not being directly related by blood, and there are further tablets in his desk, enumerating the flaws of his political enemies. Sirrush nicks a stylus, dark and heavy from the desk. Runs his thumb along the spiral pattern at the wedge end of it.

Chosen of Marduk or no, he doesn’t stick around to take in the state of the king. There are murmurs in the hall that he’s neglecting his responsibilities to Babylon’s chief and patron deity. No need to push the king directly yet. Besides, he needs a specialty curse. A precise one, and that just isn’t his style. His curses are usually along the lines of: _fuck you, fuck off_ and _don’t fuck with mine._ He wrinkles his nose and summons a trapdoor from the ether, and starts his long descent down the pitch-dark stairs beneath it.

The humans aren’t wrong about the underworld being dusty. These days head office resembles an inverted Ziggurat. A stepped pyramid going lower and lower beyond comprehension. With cuneiform sigils warning demons to “ _get back to work and stop trying to decipher this human nonsense.”_ There is also the tried and time-honored declaration: _The beatings will continue._ (The hapless demon who had suggested the addendum _‘until morale improves’_ is still receiving a beating. As far as Crawley knows, morale has not improved.)

He does not relish this errand, but there’s only one source he can go to for this. As he enters the third sub-basement sub-level he sees that it is only mildly crowded with a queue of about forty-thousand or so demons waiting to shuffle up to the only open window within the barred wall at the front of Dagon’s otherwise impenetrable office.

Dagon, having received some nominal amount of worship by the locals, is in rare form. Scales glistening, corporation huge and towering over the ridiculously undersized desk stationed in front of their pale, fishy underbelly. The fins along the marine portion of her corporation look razor sharp and deadly serious. Crawley tries waiting in line, he really does, but he can’t take it for more than five minutes, so he goes and tries to see if he can cut in line. As a proper demon does. 

“Dagon!”

“Back of the line, Crawley!” The stink of fish wafts over him.

“Bit of a hurry,” he flashes a smile in what he hopes is the right combination of winning, ingratiating, and threatening as he edges not _too_ close to the actual line leader. “Your favorite people _need_ you Dagon.” Crawley pauses, “Actually their _neighbors_ need you. And I can help them out. I’d hate to see you lose such a promising foothold on Earth.”

“And where's your form?” Dagon doesn’t even look at him as she inspects a clay-fired cylinder, which they then throw in the current applicant’s face, shattering on its horns. “Disgusting! Fill it out correctly or else I’ll have the lower-downs strip your torturing rights for a millennia! As for you,” bright, reflective eyes fix on him. “You have the _temerity_ to cut to the head of the line and just make a demand of me?”

“Ah ah ah, technically I haven’t made any demands yet! That can be arranged however, if that’s an invitation.”

“Back. Of. The. Line,” the Lord of the Files intones, sending a shiver through the room.

“I’ll just wait here until the line clears up, shall I?” Crawley smiles sweetly and makes his way over to the table covered in clay and other stamps and seals to fill out the requisite forms and cylinders. There’s a metal cup full of styli in the center—only there because he doesn’t truly _need_ them. (It’s always empty the _second_ when the table is approached with a late report and your only stylus is lost in the bowels of Hell somewhere.) He cuts out a piece of clay and starts filling it out with the human’s stylus. Bakes it with a smidge of hellfire, then tsks aloud. “Oh dear. What a stupid mistake. Better start over.” He tosses the biscuit-sized hunk of clay to the ground with a satisfying smash. Several other demons glare at him, but Crawley ignores them. He does it again. And again. And again. Fifty times he fails to learn from his mistakes.

He’s just getting started. He taps the stylus against every surface on the table, as though thinking, altering the pattern just enough so it can never fade into the background completely. Crawley uses it to stir the cup of perfectly jet black styli at the center of the counter. The rattle of them fills the hall with a noise awful enough that he sees five demons abandon all hope. And their place in line.

He picks up a cylinder, rolls it back and forth across the table. He can _feel_ Dagon's eyes on him. He doesn't think it's a coincidence when Ligur and Hastur appear, materializing from the shadows. Ligur sits across from him, but says nothing. Crawley hums tunelessly, and flicks his thumbnail along one of the clay protrusions. He can feel Hastur loom behind him.

"Hullo Lord Hastur. Ligur," Crawley nods. "Care to recount the deeds of the day?" He grabs the stylus again and starts defacing the cylinder in his hands.

“CRAWLEY!”

He drops the writing utensil and cylinder immediately. They roll across the table and the entire cup at the center spills over, sending a dozen or so styli across its surface and onto the floor.

“Yes, Lord of the Files?"

“My office. Now.”

Crawley swallows. He's honestly not sure if Dagon is displeased or impressed by the future torment any applicants will face due to his actions.

A door swung open with a groan of torment from the pitch black wall along the side. Crawley brushes some imaginary dirt from the front of his robes and saunters into Dagon’s personal demesne in Hell. The Corner Office.

The interior of the Corner Office is vast. Far deeper than it appears from without through the bars. Rows and rows of shelves with immaculately filed tablets go farther than Crawley can see. The ceiling—low and sagging without—can’t be seen in here. It’s cool as well, like a cave. There’s moisture too, Crawley can taste it on his tongue, transformed and tainted by erosion.

The door swings shut behind him, narrowly missing his heels. Dagon slams the window shut directly on the fingers of the next demon in line, who howls as they’re shorn clean off. “Well?”

Crawley stares through the bars before he remembers himself. Drags his eyes away from stump hands to unsettlingly filmy-white eyes. “Right. I’m on a job, topside. There’s been… complications. King’s already mad, but! I think I can do something better.”

“This is worth upending my _system_ for?”

“Look, just hear me out!”

One of Dagon’s fins flicks, and it carves out a notch on the ridiculously small desk.

“Right, so, the lot worshipping you, they’re sort of neighbors to Babylon, yeah? Well, king’s gone mad. No successor in sight. Power struggle’s already started. But-but! He threw his heir-apparent in jail. Now, that’s not going to do anyone any good.”

“Crawley if you don’t tell me why I should care within the next thirty seconds, I’ll eat you and pick my teeth with your bones.”

“Power vacuum!” Crawley blurts out, feeling far more claustrophobic than should be possible in a room of this size, with a ceiling that vaults so impossibly high. “At this rate, they’re liable to sort it out before the king dies. If you want your friends to have a shot at taking over the greatest city under the sun, you have to make sure all the major players are still on the board when the king goes.”

The Lord of the Files drums her fingers thoughtfully against the desk. “What do you _want_ Crawley?”

“A curse. One of your most exquisitely rendered ones, Your Precision.” He bows, and every inch of his skin wants to scream as he exposes the back of his neck.

“All this fuss for a curse,” Dagon’s lips curl, pulling back to flash what little light there was off the reflective surfaces of their teeth.

“It’s a two-for-one since we can probably nab the soul of at least one of them. The son’s been praying for help. _Single out for harm the one who stirred up harmful talk of me!_ Practically half-signed a contract already, yeah? We just need to bring down the one who slandered him. Easy enough.”

Something like delight flashes in Dagon’s eyes and she smiles, “Ahhh, now I see why you wanted me. Alright.” Her features harden again. “Fine. Give me the instrument with which to reflect back the damage onto the slanderer.”

Crawley hides his relief. Stuffs it into a box and sets it aflame. He swaggers over to the bars at the front.

“Oi! Ligur! Gimme my stick!” Ligur doesn’t move from his spot at the counter. He does get a withering glare for his trouble, and the other demon clears the table with a slow, deliberate sweep of his arm. _Alright. Maybe not Ligur then._

“You,” Crawley points at the next demon in line behind the unfortunate creature still standing at the front, hands wedged under its second set of armpits. “What’s yer face. Bahopheomaal! Gimme the stylus I brought in.” The other creature _looks_ like a Bahopheomaal anyway. Goat headed and mouse tailed. And something in its infernal aura screaming _division._ Like a wound never healed. Nothing special.

The creature gives Crawley a murderous glare, but it gets out of line and shuffles haplessly amongst the tools on the floor, grumbling something about 'hazing by senior demons.'

Finally it gets up, a perfectly jet black, plain stylus in hand, and a rather trepidatious, hopeful expression across it's goat-like features. It holds it out at arm's length like it might go off and sticks it through the bars, glancing nervously between Crawley and Dagon.

“C’mon, that’s not it at all. It’s the one I just brought in. Try again!” It bounces off the other demon’s shoulder as he chucks it back.

The demon goes back to the pile and holds up two more, one in each hand.

“Don’t be daft, it’s right there at your feet!”

“Have you gone mad? Don’t waste everyone’s time like this! Just because you’re the only permanent demon on Earth-”

“What are you _talking_ about? It’s _completely_ obvious. Look again. I _just brought it in_. It looks nothing like-” Crawley stops speaking all of a sudden. His face burns and he can hear Adini's voice. _There is a secret pattern on the wall only those so blessed can see._ Crawley swallows and draws in a breath as his reality reorganizes itself.

He can feel eyes on him. Not all eyes, thankfully. Ligur seems suitably oblivious. If it isn't an act to get his guard down. Ligur generally has five modes of operation: dubious distrust, disdainful disregard, disgruntled discontent, distantly-contained demonic rage, and active drive to dismemberment. Crawley knows which one he likes to stay on the right side of. Dagon merely seems irritated with the whole proceedings, and is glaring at him like most of the others. Like Crawley is the world's greatest inconvenience they've ever had the misfortune to meet. He hears a few growls from the back, _Get on with it!_

Hastur on the other hand is staring right at him. Like he's trying to burn a hole through his sternum. Without a word, but with plenty of menace, he walks up to the table and bends down to grab the stylus without breaking eye contact with Crawley's spine. Hastur walks it over to the open window, and passes it through.

"Bout time," Crawley grumbles, hands gripping his prize tightly. He passes it to Dagon, and adds a little too loudly, “It reeks of human. Shouldn’t be too hard to keep track of.” With that he leaves the office, slithering through the narrow bars at the front. He shoulders past Hastur. He doesn't move like he's scared. He's too cool and too important for that. He's just got better places to be.

The hallways are too empty as he leaves. As he finds his way back to the staircase he created to come down. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Hell is _never_ this empty, and all the devils are here.

As he rounds the fifth corner on his way up the stairwell, a hand grips his too skinny shoulder and slams him against a wall. He can hear his bones creak. Hears a fault line travel down the surface of his humerus more than he feels it.

“What do you see?"

Before he can answer, there’s a knife growing out of his gut. Hastur's hand attached to the handle at the other end.

Crawley gasps weakly and coughs, blood flowing ruby red like wine down onto the filthy floor. Barely noticeable against the other blood and muck and dust.

"What're you talking abou-argh!" He hates himself for crying out as Hastur twists the knife. This is just pain. His skin is just a cloak, his body isn’t real. The threat of _real_ harm to the stuff beneath is more terrifying than these feeble signals being sent along nociceptors. And he knows Hastur is capable of it.

Relishes it.

"You see in color boy, is that it?"

"What? No! D'you? 's that why you stabbed me?

“I stabbed you because I don't like you and it was fun. You were looking at Ligur." These last words are uttered so quietly Crawley almost doesn't hear it over the sound of his internal fluids spilling onto the flagstones. Hastur's eyes are like a pair of dark scarlet pools almost black. They narrow suspiciously.

Ligur, Crawley realizes now, is the most colorful demon of the lot. "He was in my face. Sorta like you," Crawley speaks through gritted teeth. If he doesn't show at least a _little_ distress Hastur will start _really_ laying into him. And flaying into him.

"The stylus," Hastur presses the knife forward. Gives it another quarter turn. Crawley hisses, teeth threatening to crack as he feels the twist of membranes and the grind of intestines within his abdomen. Like artisanal sausages.

"Snake thing." Or possibly a starmaker thing. "Can see…" he wiggles his bloody fingers, letting more blood gush freely down his robes at his front. "Still all darks and lights. My lights just go… father. Different type of wavelengths from the sun.”

Hastur angles the blade down sharply. Crawley can hardly breathe and it isn't for show now. “Is that right?” Hastur’s breath is like a bog, foul and full of peat. He annoints his palm with blood and waves it in Crawley’’s face. “What do you _see?_ ”

 _Oh fuck. No. No, no no. You do, don’t you? You actually do. Fuck._ He should have realized it sooner, even with a knife in his abdomen.

“...Ishtar's favorite. Wet and sticky. Dark.” Crawley breathes, shaken.

"I don't know that I trust you Crawley," Hastur lowers his voice to a threatening hiss. This is worse. Worse than his unbridled glee or maniacal laughter. Worse than turning himself into a sea of maggots.

The other demon's face looms closer. He can smell the rot of bodies beneath that peat moss layer. For the wildest moment, Crawley fears that Hastur will kiss him. "I think you're lying to me."

"Aren't you?"

There's a slow, dangerous blink.

"I think you see in color, your lordship. You didn't pick it out from the stink of human at all. You _saw_ something. Something no one else can. Just like you see something in Ligur."

There's a terrible stillness. Crawley wonders if he's guessed wrong. Maybe he's not as clever as he thinks.

A hand darts up and clutches his throat. Blunt nails biting into his skin, squeezing the air from his windpipe.

"So what if I do? What business is it of yours? You can't prove it."

Crawley tries to control his corporation. It wants to cough and wheeze and gasp all at once. "S-same t'you. Can't… Prove… me."

"Why would a runt like you be able to see in color? You're nobody. You _were_ nobody." Crawley sucks in what he can of his breath, then answers in a steady, serious voice devoid of the need of oxygen.

“You’re wrong, Lord Hastur.”

Those almost-black eyes narrow into slits. Crawley holds every other piece of himself together as scarlet spills down his front.

“You’re questioning me?”

His voice holds steady even as he feels the pressure of bone trying to tear through the skin on his neck, “Oh no. You know me, I _never_ ask questions. I’m disagreeing.” Crawley smiles coldly, like this has all been a fun joke he’s been indulging in, “I’m the fucking _Serpent of Eden_ , _inventor of Original Sin._ Capital ‘O’ capital ‘S’ or whatever fucking wedges you want to use for them.” His lips feel cold and numb. “And you? Nothing but another Earl of Hell. You’ll never be what I am or was, and I say we should just forget this conversation ever happened and go our separate ways. Might be the best thing for both of us, yeah?”

Spots dance across his vision, like tiny voids of starless space as Hastur tightens his hold on his neck. All at once gravity hits and he lands in his own blood as the Earl lets him go.

“You can’t skate by on that forever,” he hisses. “This isn’t over, _snake_.” And just like that, Hastur is gone.

Crawley shakes all over as the pain hits, and his lungs desperately try to draw in air. _Bastard could have left the knife in…_ He presses a hand to his belly, but he can’t find it in himself to cauterize the wound. Instead he crawls up the impossibly long set of stairs, trailing _red_ befitting Ishtar behind him.

It is dark when he reaches Babylonian soil again. The air tastes damp and loamy like no desert does. He can hear great chains drawing up water from the river. Crawley blindly sags against the wall with a secret only those with soulmates can see. Sits down in the dirt where he foolishly promised a mortal he’d do something in exchange for nothing at all except some good company. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He winces and tries to stretch out his legs. _It was stupid to make that promise, just like it was stupid to claw your way out of Hell when all you’re going to do is die and go back there anyway._

“Well, if I’m g’nna discorporate, might as well do it in a quiet place,” he rasps out in a broken voice. He wishes Adini was here to tell him a story. Closes his eyes and starts to reach out to make that happen while he waits to die in the spot where Sirrush was born.

“Crawley!?”

Now _there’s_ a voice he hasn’t heard in over a century. Slowly he opens his eyes and looks up, though his vision is a little blurred.

“Oh. ‘S you Azira-ziraphale.” As if he hadn’t known. He tries to arrange himself in a casual pose, but his body doesn’t quite want to cooperate. He falls on his side instead. There’s a cry of dismay and a rather… well… heavenly scent fills his senses as the angel kneels beside him.

“Are you alright!?”

He _thinks_ he succeeds in rolling his eyes. “N’yeah. Just fine. Dandy. Grand. Go on then,” only it comes out more like one word _go’an_. “Finish me off.” He waves his hand. Red and wet and sticky with blood. “Take out y’r adverserary.” It will look a _little_ better on his discorporation report at least, when he can report that an enemy operator took him out, at least.

“Don’t be ridiculous you awful creature! Just look at the state of you!” The angel wrings his hands, cheeks ruddy.

“Don’ worry. Y’kin tell your lot we had a great battle, honest. Won’t say anything.” The demon rolls on his back, resigning himself the inevitable. He makes a noise as Aziraphale collects him and scoots him into his lap.

"Who did this to you!? Sandalphon? Michael? Uriel? Oh dear oh dear," trust an angel, _this angel_ , to sound so worried about his capital E enemy.

Crawley laughs through crimson bubbling at the back of his throat. _What makes you think one of your lot had anything to do with this?_

"Wasn't, wasn't n'angel… Hastur. Earl of Hell." _Favored of Ishtar, no doubt. She’s cruel as War and just as red._

“ _Your own kind_ did this to you!?” Those cheeks are even more flush now. Though not as red as the star of Ishtar behind them. Crawley smiles a little, wants to laugh because he suddenly feels like he knows _everything_. The whole spectrum, the whole bloody rainbow, not just the longest wavelengths that are visible.

“So surprisssed?” He turns his head into the angel’s thigh. He smells clean and light. Not heavy like iron. Like hemoglobin or a flaming sword. _Discorporating like this wouldn’t be so bad,_ he thinks. If it wouldn’t mean such a colossal waste of effort of crawling all the way back up to Earth. “‘S what my lot _do._ You know. Not very nice.”

“Not even to each other?” The gentlest fingers stroke his hair back along his forehead.

“ _Specially_ not to each other,” Crawley isn’t sure how he even has a voice. His throat _must_ be shattered and ruined.

“Oh Crawley, I’m so _sorry_ ,” and then the angel lifts his arm, takes his hand. Brushes his thumb over bloody knuckles. This isn’t how friends hold hands. Crawley knows because he’s never had a friend. This must be how enemies hold hands. With his adversary caressing his limp fingers before flattening his palm between his. The angel wringing Crawley’s hand on his behalf.

“...So, so this was done to you by Hell and not Heaven. Just to be clear.” Somewhere above him, he can just make out the angel biting his lip.

“Yeah. Pretty sure we covered that already. Or is this the blood loss? ‘M I not making any sense? Not answering yer questions? Quick, how many fingers ‘m I holding up?” He weakly holds up the fingers of his other hand in a rude gesture favored by the local camel riders.

“If this was done to you by Hell, then I better thwart it.” He feels his arm lower a touch, palm seared to a single palm now, strong fingers holding his dead weight aloft, cradling it like something precious. There’s the lightest flutter of skin at the side of his throat.

“Wha-?” He shuts his eyes against a sudden, brilliant light.

He expects it to burn. Their natures shouldn’t be able to meld. They’re supposed to be immiscible. Like iron and clay. It feels like slipping into a cool bath. The gentlest brooke of clear water. A soothing touch wrapped around his too-lean belly that Hastur had tried to hollow out.

There's the faintest cool pressure to his throat. _This is the opposite of red_. There's no other way to describe the feeling. It's soft. He can feel his throat rebuild under that touch, can feel his wounds washing away. Like Aziraphale lay him in the river instead of on his thighs. Let him be carried up and away from his pain as if drawn into one of those vast buckets.

“Good heavens, why did they do this to you?” The press of Aziraphale’s thumb against his own feels _urgent_ in a way he doesn’t understand. His eyes are still closed and he sees that same color, bright and intense still. Like staring at the sun through closed lids. Blood catching the light and filtering through it before reaching the retina.

Crawley thinks for a moment. He can't just _say_ it. The pain and the wounds were bad, but this is worse. He knows that Hastur _must_ be his soulmate. This is his real punishment, and it took him forever to see. And the only thing that saved him is the fact that the Earl of Hell—one of many—lacks enough imagination to draw the same conclusion.

Crawley draws in a long, easy lungful of air and breathes out a lie, “Don’t worry about it. Doesn’t matter. Hell stuff.” It doesn’t matter. Not really. He’ll keep this secret on the inside, like blood. The only problem is Crawley is red-bellied.

Sirrush is not.

Sirrush slowly opens his eyes, blinking against the blinding sun until it obligingly hides away in another plane of existence.

He smiles at the angel. “Hey.”

“Hullo,” those pale brows are drawn down and tight.

“Buy you a drink?” He summons a cast of wine as befits a king, but it hurts a little to do so.

“Crawley!”

Sirrush shakes his head back and forth slowly, head resting in a rather lovely crease created by the angel’s thighs. “Tell me… You asked once about seeing in color. This wall… this garden… made with love.” _Even though there’s no such thing, aren’t humans incredible?_ “There’s a secret, only those with color sight can see. Tell me what you see, on this wall.”

His hereditary enemy keeps a gentle hold on his hand, rests it against his own chest as he twists to look behind him. Aziraphale studies it for several moments. “It’s… why it’s tickety-boo! Just like your hair! A huge star. Eight points, and a flower in the center. And, and there are arches and squiggles they’re… well rather like the sand. Do you see it?” There’s the tiniest, fleetingest touch along his jaw. He must have imagined it.

“No,” Sirrush says, closing his eyes again so it’s less of a lie. “Sounds lovely though. Thanks. Was curiousss. Going to drive me mad… secrets like that.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry dear boy.” There’s a strange ache in his chest. A familiar anger against Her tries to take hold there. Sirrush ignores it. Those problems aren’t his problems. The residual aches in this body belong to somebody else.

“Don’t be,” he whispers. “You should really try the local vintage. Have you heard the one about Ishtar and Dumuzid?”

There’s a reluctant expression on the angel’s face, but suddenly there are two goblets sitting beside the cask. Sirrush doesn’t try to move from his spot, and Aziraphale doesn’t make him, just tops off his goblet every time it gets empty. Sirrush watches as it stains the angel’s lips.

Just for a moment, he wonders if they would taste like the opposite of red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to noodlefrog for looking at this and helping make it presentable. Also huge props to Phoenix_of_Athena for letting me ramble until this all untangled itself. I have the rest of this fic outlined so I have a much clearer sense of where it's going than I did before. As always, I am on tumblr at liquidlyrium or you can shout at me on the Discord Lyrium_Seeker#3439. I'm on several Good Omens servers so don't be shy to whisper or DM me!


	3. Sola fide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There against the dark of mud and sickly patches of olive grass is a flash of red spilling out from beneath a dark metal helmet. A scarlet banner. _Tickety-boo._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains: Bad dates, some mild body horror/snakish eating habits from Crowley, more hurt/comfort and injuries, awkward nudity and boners, touching oneself while Effortless, extreme repression and rationalization. Also an oblique, non-graphic reference to a Viking torture method that may or may not have a historical basis in fact but, uh, be careful if you google it and don't already know what it is.
> 
> Further historical context explained in the end notes.

**[Rome 41 AD]**

It’s only once they’re at Petronius’s restaurant, after a spirited afternoon of day drinking, seated across from one another that Aziraphale realizes how much he dislikes Crowley’s new glasses.

He frowns into his glass as he realizes the shaded lenses hide those beautiful eyes from sight.

It isn’t fair, really, now that he knows what to call them.

The words that all mean _yellow_ roll around his head, melt on his tongue. He's said them aloud, alone. In secret. Some of them are hidden in plain view. Plain hearing? Words that are colors but also mundane things. A double meaning only those with this window of insight into the cosmos can understand. Gold. Saffron. Honey. Amber. That one might be Aziraphale’s favorite.

He hadn’t noticed, somehow, over the past few hours. Not as they caught up on their time apart. Crowley had spent a couple years in the province of Asiana, and the last six all across Gaul. Oh he can’t _approve_ of anything the demon has been getting up to, but he isn’t a _bad_ sort… not really. Deep down. He’d proven that at Golgotha.

_How often do you take kindness and dress it up in the guise of temptation?_ The angel pulls the very corner of his lower lip between his teeth. _Am I the only one who suspects you were there so that he was not alone in being forsaken by Her?_ Aziraphale still finds himself smiling, laughing at one of the demon’s many stories. It’s the best sort of laughter when he knows he really oughtn’t to laugh, which makes it more satisfying somehow.

_Did you know, your eyes are just like amber? Like the sun’s rays caught through honey and crystallized tree sap? Apollo would be jealous._

The candle light reflects brightly off of the laurels crowning the demon’s head. Aziraphale idly remembers bright yellow ribbons threaded through Crowley's madder red hair some three hundred odd years ago.

Crowley, still Crawley then, had been posing as Urania. Long hair piled up into beguiling curls. A dark chiton embroidered with tiny golden starbursts. In the evenings she had a black himation wrapped around her, the long expanse of cloth covered in constellations to match the _galaxias_. She’d pulled it over her hair so that it acted like a hood; it was similar to the abaya she’d worn in Golgotha not so very long ago. But it wasn’t enough to conceal that tell-tale spill of fire from the crown of her head, nor the tease of those narcissus yellow strands tickling her sharp collarbones. The next time they’d crossed paths he was doing his best impression of a dark and dashing disciple of Asclepius, and Aziraphale was only a _little_ saddened that Crawley’s hair was too short for such adornments.

Every time they cross paths the demon looks like something, someone new.

His fingers twitch now, as they had then, with the urge to braid the other’s hair. _Ridiculous._ For starters, the urge only ever seems to strike him when the other has gone and cut his hair short, which is to say nothing of the other myriad of reasons he could never braid Cra-Crowley’s hair for him.

Still, he’s just drunk enough that an ill-advised miracle snaps free, and the laurels on Crowley’s head ripple gold and warm in the candlelight. The serpent reaches up to touch his head.

“What’s that? What’d you do?”

“I just…” Aziraphale shakes his head. “Well, I had remembered… er, that is to say.”

Aziraphale traces his finger along the rough surface of the table.

“Spit i’out then.”

“Well, you’ve mentioned… in the past,” Aziraphale bites his lip. “Er, that you don’t… see in color.” Across the table Crowley goes as still as marble. The angel feels his heart pounding in his chest, and they sit unmoving, even as a servant finally brings out a tray positively laden with oysters. Split open and served in their own shells. For a fleeting moment, he remembers Eden. The moments where he went too far, and the others where he found out he hadn’t.

“Right,” Crowley finally says tightly, and _oh_ , Aziraphale doesn’t like not being able to see those eyes at all now! How can he _tell_ if he’s made a mistake now? Something in his throat tightens, tries to spiral in on itself like a dark and dappled sea creature looking for somewhere safe to hide.

“Unless, unless that’s changed, of course. I don’t mean to _presume-_ ”

“No!” The word comes out harshly. There’s tension in the demon’s shoulders again, and his scowl is back. “No change there.”

Aziraphale opens his mouth, a stuttering noise precedes his words, “I just… I thought a different… when you were... This color brings out your eyes!”

The tension… doesn’t exactly leave Crowley, but he remains still. A different sort of stillness from before. His frown is a little less deep.

Finally his jaw parts, and those brows knit together. Not unlike the first time he’d told Crowley the Great Plan was ineffable. “...I,” the demon coughs behind a fist briefly before taking a long swig of wine directly from the jug at the center of the table. He wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist after with a quiet gasp, “‘S not exactly what I’m going for. D’you not see the glasses?”

Aziraphale nods silently. “I… I’m sorry… I just… I don’t know what came over me.” 

The demon shakes his head, the muscles at the corners of his jaw tight, but the motion of his head is loose and free. The angel isn’t sure what to make of it. “S’fine.” It doesn’t _seem_ fine, but perhaps he should take Crowley at his word. “So, this is what you came all the way to Rome for?”

Wordlessly, he nods, and he reaches out for a shell. “I’ve had oysters before, of course, but these are supposed to be… well, try one for yourself!”

Crowley reaches out and plucks one of the shells, dubiously, as if reluctant to touch it. Yet he lifts it up a moment later, holding it between them in the space above the table. Belatedly, Aziraphale realizes what he’s waiting for and clinks his own against it a moment later with another light _‘salutaria!’_

Aziraphale places the shell at the edge of his lips and tips the oyster and the brine into his mouth. He can taste the exact place where this oyster had called itself home. Not a wild thing, but carefully grown and cultivated to fulfil demand. He can taste the ingenuity, the generations of labor and forethought that went into this one morsel as it practically dissolves between his teeth as he eats it naked.

The taste of the sea is still strong on his lips when he opens his eyes. He feels a bit of heat on his cheeks and his eyes widen as he realizes Crowley hasn’t tried his yet. _Was he watching…?_ It’s difficult to say with those infernal glasses.

“It really _is_ rather lovely. Go on,” he tries to give the demon an encouraging smile.

Crowley slowly lifts the oyster, the tip of it resting between his lips—then he continues to feed the rest of it into his mouth. Slowly pushing the shell between his jaws with the heel of his hand until it disappears entirely. Aziraphale feels his eyelids pull back as far as they’ll go. There’s the barest noise from the demon, a slight movement behind those cheeks as that tongue rearranges the contents within—and then he tosses his head back and _swallows_.

Aziraphale gasps, he can’t help it. It’s mildly stomach churning, and it is not a quick thing. It’s a slow constriction; he can trace the movement of it by the noticeable bulge that slides down Crowley’s throat. It stops behind his Adam's apple. The distended skin shifts in place like the shell is being turned over—and then there is a loud, sharp, unmistakable _snap_ before the slow, terrible squeeze returns. The bulge resumes its downward trek until the contents finally, mercifully slide down behind the cage of his ribs, though Aziraphale can’t seem to tear his eyes away from the hollow of his throat now.

Aziraphale presses his mouth against his palm, drawing in a tight breath, as he realizes he can still see the muscles of Crowley’s throat flex around the absence as the bivalve completes the slow journey in the lower half of the demon’s esophagus. That chin is still angled upwards, holding that stretch of skin between jaw and throat taut. Trembling and straining with effort.

Crowley untenses all at once, with a little gulping noise at the back of his throat. “Nmh. Not bad, I guess. Salty little buggers.”

“Cra- _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale hisses, cheeks blazing.

“What?”

_“There are humans here!”_

The demon sniffs once, unimpressed. His scowl deepens as he tilts his head, presumably fixing Aziraphale with a glare behind his lenses, “If you’re going to criticize how I eat, I can leave.”

“It wasn’t a-I only,” Aziraphale stops speaking abruptly as Crowley’s face suddenly breaks out into a wide, toothy, grin. _He was fooling with you._ It hurts, realizing he was being played for sport, not being in on the joke. “Oh… you, you awful _serpent!_ ”

“Come off it Aziraphale!” The demon lets his lip curve into a smile that’s not as endearing as the ones earlier. Not that any of his smiles should be categorized as such.

“You’ll get yourself in trouble,” Aziraphale warns. He hates all of this. How is it possible for a simple pair of spectacles to make him feel so off-balance?

The smile drops from Crowley’s face.

“So what if I do? Why do you care?”

It’s like every breath he’s ever taken leaves his lungs all at once.

“What kind of question is that?” Aziraphale replaces his empty shell for another oyster. Pours the contents into his mouth to stop himself from saying something more, something foolish. Something else to make fun of.

“S’what it sounds like,” Crowley suddenly sits up in his chair, spine straight, but swaying in place. “Why d’you care? Wossit matter t’you?” One of his hands clutches the edge of the table. He can see the surface of the wine tremble, and the angel realizes that it’s from the prodigious bouncing of the demon’s leg under the table.

"You seem uncomfortable," Aziraphale rotates the shell in his hands. Runs his thumbs along the star bright edges of the shell. "We've done this before. Is something wrong?" _Please, let me see your eyes. Did I do something when we last met? Is this my fault? Is there something you don’t want me to see? Is it because you don’t see color at all? I don’t understand._

"It's a bit different, isn't it?" The demon lowers his voice, tension in his cheeks again.

"Well, we have been at this for several hours now…”

"That's not what I meant!" Crowley has a stricken look on his face. "...What _is_ this?" He gestures between them uselessly, and Aziraphale can tell that _something_ is terrifying him. Or… bothering him. Something’s wrong, at any rate.

Aziraphale opens his mouth, then closes it. He runs his tongue over his lips to buy himself some time.

"I thought," he says haltingly, "that perhaps we might be…" Aziraphale reaches out and takes a swing of weak wine, suddenly feeling like an oyster himself. Split open and bare. Ready to be plucked and eaten, swallowed down. (He doesn't care for the former sensation, but oh the latter realization makes him tingle all over. As if lightning is rolling all over his skin. How curious.) He casts about for the proper word like one of Homer’s ill-fated sailors, looking for the slightest piece of driftwood.

"I thought we might be friends," he finally says helplessly, feeling like it's woefully inadequate, yet more than he could ever hope for. (Has he ever had a friend? Truly? Is his adversary the closest thing?)

"Friends?" Crowley hisses the word, his nostrils flaring, and for a moment Aziraphale catches the glimpse of white above the rims of those sunglasses. The demon whips his head around the room fast enough that Aziraphale’s neck twinges in sympathy. “We’re _not_ friends,” he hisses wildly. “We’re an angel and _a demon_. We’ve got _nothing in common_.”

As if to drive the point home the stench of evil is truly overpowering for a moment.

“Crowley, please, I’m-”

“G’bye, _angel._ ” Crowley jumps to his feet, like a puppet responding to the pull of its strings. In a single motion the demon tosses the laurel into his seat, and moves away like a black storm cloud, vanishing from sight before Aziraphale can get out the rest of his apology.

Aziraphale looks down at the tray, blinking through suddenly blurred vision. He goes to stack the empty shells together, but he can't find the first. He sees a black leather purse spilling over with a few sesterces and other coins nestled at the center of the laurel in the seat opposite him.

The angel stares at the tray for a few minutes longer before he pushes it away, and pulls the jug of wine closer. It tastes considerably saltier than before. Aziraphale tells himself it is the aftertaste of brine in his mouth, even though it doesn’t tell him the tale of generations of oyster farmers.

_What could I possibly have done that was so wrong?_

**[Wessex 878 AD]**

Wessex has not changed much somehow in the intervening years. Despite the political upheaval. The Levels are still a quagmire full of damp and muck. Despite the many, many centuries humans have attempted to drain it. Aziraphale wonders how much longer he’s going to be stuck here. It’s been nearly four months of gruelling guerrilla warfare against the Danes.

He has to trust that there’s some great cosmic meaning assigned to their deaths. That there’s something worth the suffering these people inflict on one another. That their lives give weight to a moral argument.

Aziraphale has not killed anything, has never smote anyone, but that does not mean his hands are clean of blood.

He adjusts his armor carefully, as he walks among the fallen. He learned ages ago the limits of his miracles, what they can do in the face of ruthlessness and the human drive for bloodthirst. What his superiors will allow. Aziraphale tries to inspire as much mercy as he can, but it never seems to be enough.

His miracles are best spent before the battle ends, aiding escapes. After, he can plead for prisoners, for their baptisms and conversions. For their lives. Sometimes it works.

“Oi we got a bleeder over here!” One of Ælfræd’s thegns, Leofdæg, stands over a body in the muck. Shoulders broader than an ox.

There against the dark of mud and sickly patches of olive grass is a flash of red spilling out from beneath a dark metal helmet. A scarlet banner. _Tickety-boo._

"Can't believe he's still alive," Ceol shakes his head. A reeve from some southern hide. The human slicks back his sweat-damp hair and jams his crude helmet back onto his head.

Aziraphale jogs forward as fast as he can against the jealous embrace of the mud, armor weighing him down. He can hear the snap of marshy grasses against his ankles. The splash of muddy water seems loud against the absence of battle.

"Not for long." Leofdæg lifts his sword. Aziraphale feels his heart race.

There’s no mistaking that figure beneath the human, now that he’s closer. Aziraphale cries out before he can help himself, before he can give any thought at all.

"Wait! I know this…” Aziraphale falters for a moment, “this Dane! Don't kill him!

"How do you know him?" The sword lowers slowly, the lethal intent removed for the moment.

_This is a mistake_ , the angel realizes. They shouldn’t know each other at all, Azriaphale twists his hands uselessly.

"We've… we've fought before."

Leofdæg hefts his blade, looking at Aziraphale with no small amount of suspicion. "Why not kill him then?"

"He... he might have information. He's a clever thing. Wily and cunning to the core. I'm sure he knows something." There's an ache in his chest. Like a ship about to split apart along the keel. “I’m sure we can draw something useful from him.”

Ceol curls his lip into a mocking grin, “Ever the push for mercy with you, isn’t it, mighty Æthelweard?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, lips pursing into a tight line. He sloshes closer to the fallen form of Crowley on the ground, slowing cautiously as he nears the two men.

"We have our own wounded to tend to. Nothing to carry him back with," Ceol warns, his expression turning sour.

"Never you mind!" Aziraphale snaps. "I'll take care of it." He kneels down in the mud beside Crowley's limp form. _Oh please don't say I'm too late._ “I’ll take all responsibility for this wretched creature. If you want to question my decision, you can talk to Ælfræd when we get back.”

There’s something familiar in the way that Leofdæg and Ceol look at him. Expressions twisted in impotent frustration, looking for a flaw in his argument or an excuse to point out how wrong he is. Only he is an angel of the Lord. He’s never meant to _be_ wrong.

“Fine, but don’t expect any help with him,” Ceol finally snaps, looking thoroughly displeased. “If you get tired of him, I know any number of good hands that would spill Dane blood in the service of Ælfræd cyning.”

Aziraphale doesn’t answer, but he watches Coel and Leofdæg go and take command of the troops. To organize the looting of bodies and the care of the wounded. The angel sighs and looks down at the form clad in black iron-mail. It’s humbler than he would have expected, but there’s a bit of draconic-themed detailing to the helmet. Just around the metal bands that frame the serpent’s eyes like a mask. Aziraphale feels his breath catch as he realizes those arresting eyes are fluttering open.

Crowley groans and turns his head to grin at the angel, “We've got to stop meeting like this.” The serpent reaches out with an arm and shifts in the earth with a groan, but then he stops moving.

"We really must," Aziraphale says, his heart plunging deep into his stomach. His hands feel cold inside his gauntlets.

Crowley breathes shallowly before he flips himself over onto his back. He hisses sharply, face contorting in pain.

“Crowley! Stop _wiggling_ about!” Aziraphale glances about. He can see Leofdæg staring at them.

Crowley’s expression flickers defiantly once, before he settles in place, hand curling over the wound at his side. “Think I left a spear lying around somewhere.”

“We’re being watched,” Aziraphale warns him softly. The hairs on the back of the angel’s neck stand on end.

The demon mutters some rejoinder Aziraphale can’t hear.

“I’ve been trying to be very judicious and careful with my miracle use around these humans.” Aziraphale doesn’t want to think about what they would try to make him do. What they would pray for. What prayers he would be forced to answer.

“‘S fine,” Crowley sighs, and the angel can’t help but think of a garden on a riverbank.

“It is _not_ fine. I’m going to bring you back to Athelney with me and we’re going to set you to rights.”

For a moment, Aziraphale is unspeakably angry because he can tell that Crowley’s face has crinkled, and he can’t see the little wrinkle that shows up between his brows when he’s trying to find an answer to one of his many deep, unspoken questions.

He’ll still take the helm over the glasses.

“Just don’t put me on a horse. Won’t end well for anybody.”

“Too muddy here,” Aziraphale shakes his head. “Didn’t bring any horses today.”

“Fantastic, great, terrific. You know you could just discorporate me. Or pretend to. Let me sleep it off.”

“ _No.”_ Aziraphale says it more forcefully than he means to. He can’t banish the sight of Leofdæg standing over Crowley’s helpless form with his sword raised.

A few moments of silence pass between them.

“You can’t mean to-”

“Let’s just arrange you,” the angel tries to ignore the uncomfortable sensation of mud seeping in through the edges of his greaves.

The serpent makes a noise of dismay, but he doesn’t have enough in him to do more than give a token wiggle of protest as Aziraphale worms a hand under his knees and one beneath the other’s shoulders.

“You aren’t nearly as heavy as you look—or as you should be.” Aziraphale can’t help but worry.

“Not in this form,” the demon turns his head and stares resolutely at Aziraphale’s chest. If he had a third hand, Aziraphale would reach up and brush those long, vermillion strands away from the demon’s face. “Satan’s sake this is embarrassing… Should have let me die so I could keep some dignity.”

Aziraphale rolls his eyes and there’s a disgusting sound as he gets up from his knees, and then one of his ankles sinks deeper into the mud.

“See? More trouble than I’m worth,” there’s a dazed quality to Crowley’s laugh that Aziraphale doesn’t like.

“Oh, hush.” Aziraphale wrenches his leg out of the mud. And it is, perhaps, sheer stubbornness and the desire to spite the demon in his arms that powers him through the pull of wet earth.

Eventually, after the first mile, Aziraphale regrets his decision. His hose is wet beneath his armor, and there’s mud in all sorts of places he didn’t think it possible for mud to get into. Every step seems to chafe, and his toes feel soggy and pruney, and they _itch!_

“You could just leave me on the side of the road somewhere,” Crowley suggests softly, somewhere around his clavicles, after another half mile of mud and midges.

“Don’t tempt me,” Aziraphale says, out of habit, but he almost drops Crowley as soon as the words fall out of his mouth. “ _Don’t. Tempt me,_ ” he grits out, angrily. “I’m not going to just _deposit_ you somewhere like a piece of refuse.”

The demon shrugs lightly in his arms. He’s too pale for Aziraphale’s liking. “Just thinking… it’d be an awful waste of effort if my corporation gives out. No point in putting yourself through all this trouble.”

“No more of that!” Aziraphale clutches the demon closer. “And you’re right, at this point it _would_ be a waste of effort, so I’m going to _see it through_.”

There’s nothing but the sound of grass snapping at the edges of his armor, mud churning with each footstep, and the buzz of tiny, blood-thirsty insects for the next two miles.

“Gonna get back before the rest of the humans,” Crowley points out. He sounds like he’s half-asleep, and Aziraphale doesn’t like that.

“I always do. They’re used to it.”

“You’re not always carrying someone back with you.”

“You think so?”

Crowley laughs, “Ah, sorry. Thought maybe I was special. Clearly not.”

Aziraphale swallows his instinctive protest of _you're very special!_

“You have a strange talent, you know that?”

“Oh, it’s just how I was made. Part of being a principality, I could probably walk the full circumference of the earth three times while carrying you and I wouldn’t break a sweat. Well, normally. It's very damp and humid here.”

“Not-not the strength thing, though _there’s a thought_ ,” the demon adds that part under his breath, more to himself. “No, I mean… you seem to… find me, meet me whenever I’m at my lowest and just… pick me up. It’s… very strange.”

“We don’t _only_ meet when circumstances are dire,” Aziraphale protests. He can remember Eden fondly. The city-states of Greece. A wild night in Thrace. Egypt. China. Even that night in Rome hadn’t been _completely_ awful… To start with, anyway.

“No,” Crowley agrees, “but anytime I’ve been beaten ‘r disgraced ‘r trod down on… There you are.”

“I’m sorry?” Aziraphale tries. He doesn’t _mean_ to humiliate the other. That’s the farthest thing from his intentions.

The demon rolls his head back and forth on his neck. Aziraphale supposes it’s a ‘no’ gesture. “Should probably say thanks or something, but tha’s not really… demonic behavior.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale feels a flickering warmth in his chest, like a candle flame. He clutches Crowley tighter as he stumbles against the mud but, somehow, miraculously, they don’t topple over.

“But, suppose you just like t’do things the hard way, yeah? That’s your style. Toil and hard work an’ penance and such rot.”

Aziraphale frowns. “I don’t like how you can take such a virtue and make it sound…” he trails off helplessly and glances down at the demon in his arms.

“Like you’re a rube for working harder, not smarter?”

“I could drop you, you know.”

There’s a motion in his arms, almost like a shrug, but more of a twitch. “Got the message three hundred and forty-what odd years ago, yeah? You do it your way.”

“I _will_ , thank you,” Aziraphale snaps, “and I shall reap the rewards for it.”

“Oh I’m sure, bet you’re swimming in commendations, eh?”

Aziraphale felt his cheeks grow hot. “Virtue is its own reward.” Crowley makes a low, discontented noise, but his corporation shivers again. Aziraphale doesn’t like it, and he tries to pick up speed as best he can in the inclement terrain.

Four hours pass, and they have conversations in fits and spurts that grow less and less frequent as time passes. Aziraphale is drenched in enough sweat he wonders if the mud underneath his armor has washed away. He finally sees the fortress and flicker of iron workings in the distance.

The natural swamp is deeper here, and Aziraphale lifts Crowley up higher, until he finds the path under the surface of the swamp known only to him. The muck is still waist-high, but Aziraphale is thankful for the darkness as he reaches the shore of the ancient stronghold. The less he has to explain himself the better.

Aziraphale carries the fully unconscious demon all the way to Æthelweard’s private quarters.

His fingers itch. He wants to just miracle himself clean, both of them clean, but he needs to be sparing. Too many miracles at once could lead to questions from his superiors, and he doesn’t think he could give a satisfactory answer. Not right now.

Not until he has time to think.

He lays Crowley down on the bed, and he goes off to haul a tub into the room. A respectable person—like Æthelweard is supposed to be—would order someone to do this for him. The angel shrugs out of his own armor, out of the cloth padding underneath until he stands in just a simple, mud and sweat soaked pair of breeches and tunic.

He does spare a miracle to fill the tub and heat the water. (This is simple enough to explain. The standards of cleanliness are abysmal here and, of course, cleanliness is next to Godliness.) Medical supplies he already has plenty of. Not that Crowley needs the benefit of such things as bandages or poultices as explanations for his recovery.

He spares a longing glance at the bath before he turns to the man-shaped serpent in his bed. He brushes his fingertips under the iron edges of his helm. There’s no reaction and Aziraphale feels a quiet alarm build steadily in his chest.

He pulls the helmet off carefully, trying not to jostle the other’s head. He can see the dried blood matted in the demon’s hair. Braids once proud and beautiful now matted and sticky. It only takes a moment to untie the ends—half of them have come undone already.

The angel moves down Crowley’s body, stripping him with the same level of care. “Here’s your problem… this mail isn’t riveted. And the size of these rings, silly serpent.” He shakes his head, and sets the ruined byrnie aside. He carefully peels away the padded layers underneath. There’s an ugly wound on the demon’s side, probably from a spear, but he can see several bruises. Some of them are older than today’s battle. There’s one on the demon’s breastbone that looks distinctly hoof-shaped. There might be more beneath the mud and blood. The other reason he wants to do this by hand, so he can catalogue everything that needs to be healed. Aziraphale finally pulls aside the last stitch of clothing off the demon and then picks him up and settles him into the tub, easing him in toes first.

“How is it that you don’t float when you weigh nothing at all?” He doesn’t expect an answer. He kneels beside the tub, making sure that Crowley’s skull stays balanced on the edge of the tub.

“I wonder, do you always sleep with your eyes closed? Or is it just when you pass out from blood loss?” He cleans the gouge on Crowley’s side first. He doesn’t like the way the water has immediately stained with earth and blood, so he miracles the water clear again. "I don't care to sleep myself." He presses a hand to the side of the demon’s ribcage, and he summons a small amount of healing power and holds it there for several minutes until it finally closes up. The gentle motions of Crowley’s ribcage expanding and contracting with each breath sends a wave of relief down through his knees that makes Aziraphale feel weak. He lets out a long breath, and he tries to steady his hand beneath the water.

He moves his palm up, traces it carefully along the other's chest and sets to work on pressing that same, light pulse of healing over the mark of equine displeasure. Aziraphale traces along the serpent's skin, to a large bruise on the other side of the serpent's ribcage, feeling for broken ribs.

"Oh," he swallows as he catches sight of Crowley's penis between his legs, deep red and engorged with blood.

Aziraphale blushes hot. He feels like his body is trying to contain a flaming sword. He’s seen nudity before. Dressed hundreds of wounds. Even manipulated genitalia in various states of arousal in his duties as a healer. He’s never _noticed_ like this before.

Maybe because they had all been human. Their bits and pieces were part and parcel. They didn't have to make an Effort to have such things.

_Do you always make the Effort? Is it this one? Do you try on others like you do different hairstyles? Is this the same penis you always wear when you manifest one? Is it always so… sensitive?_

He can tell there's a crack in the bone under his palm, and he applies just enough energy to mend it, to gentle the bruising away to unblemished skin. Crowley's erection twitches, and Aziraphale sucks in a breath. _Goodness, did you have the same response in Babylon all those years ago?_

He tries not to stare, but he can't help peeking. Now he's simply _curious_. How long will it stay erect? "I hope this isn’t persistent. I think it’s not good if it stays that way for too long. For humans, anyway. Not certain for us." The skin is still rose petal red down there, distorted slightly through the water. He feels warmth centering in his own groin in answer. _My goodness!_ He snaps his eyes away, suddenly feeling invasive in a way he never has.

"It's perfectly natural," Aziraphale says shakily, as he has dozens of times before. "It's just a physiological reaction. Nothing more."

He keeps his touch light and clinical as he drags his hand along the other's body. He shifts in place again, trying to adjust his own Effort into a more comfortable position. "It's perfectly natural," he repeats, looking down at his own groin. "Just a physiological reaction."

He’s never needed to reassure himself of that fact before.

He swallows as he sets another healing pulse at Crowley's hip. His other hand darts out to pin the demon by the chest. He tries to immediately forget how Crowley's spine twisted just now. "No reason to be ashamed," he stammers. "Shame implies intentions, and there's none of that here, just… reflexes."

_Can it be called a natural reflex if it takes effort?_ The questioning voice in his head sounds too much like Crowley. His face burns. _Oh, you ought to get rid of yours, Aziraphale. No question of impropriety then._

"But if I banish mine," Aziraphale frowns, "that would imply that I… had intentions and I _don't!"_ He looks over the unconscious demon helplessly. "Don't you see? Bother! I've never had this problem before. Why on Earth are you trying to insert yourself into the proceedings?" He directs the question to his own corporation's erection.

"This is nothing to feel shameful about," Aziraphale repeats firmly, closing his eyes to feel one of Crowley's ankles for damage. "That’s a silly human notion. These are just bodies. Nothing special. You've healed plenty of people before, you've healed _this demon_ before… alright, perhaps that's something an angel ought to feel shameful about, but, well, ‘love your enemies, do good… hoping for nothing in return.’”

Right.

That’s all this is. Heavenly love. And a chance to _prove_ he’s better than the demon. That virtue is its own reward.

“I’m not hoping for anything,” Aziraphale frowns at Crowley. “Just so you know, I’m still cross with you. I can be cross with you and pray for you, you know.” Lord Almighty knows he’s managed the trick with the other angels of Heaven. _Pray for those who mistreat you._

He bites back a pained cry as he feels his erection throb in response to the brush he feels against his knuckles as he lays a healing hand on Crowley’s inner thigh, repairing muscle tears that seem older than today’s battle.

“Right! That does it. I may not have _intentions_ but this is not at all conducive to my concentration or wholly pleasant at the moment. That’s the _only_ reason I’m getting rid of it. It’s got nothing to do with you _at all_.”

_Really. Someone might have told me how uncomfortable an erection could be! What an unpleasant discovery!_ Aziraphale firmly tells himself it is _only_ unpleasant.

Being Effortless is not quite the balm he hopes it will be. He feels a little nauseous and dizzy as the blood once concentrated between his legs redistributes itself. It seems to decide to route up his belly and over his chest. Once the dizziness passes he feels… hot. Aziraphale doesn't know what to make of that.

He's not sure what to do with this other sense of _restlessness._ The feeling that he wants to tear his own skin off. Or scratch it until the ethereal stuff beneath bleeds through.

Once he's satisfied Crowley is fully repaired, Aziraphale sets about washing him. He starts with a long, gangly arm. Except… it isn't gangly at all, is it? Crowley's form is long and lean. Elegant. Always has been, ever since Aziraphale had seen him as a serpent.

His fingers tangle with the demon's unresponsive ones, and then he lifts the arm and scrubs underneath with soap from Aleppo, the green-gold bar lathering and filling the air with the aroma of olive oil. He takes care with washing Crowley's chest, using the gentlest of touches and the softest rag. Just in case there are any residual aches. If he has overlooked any injuries.

He notices, not that he's trying to notice, that Crowley's aroused state seems to be going away. Something like relief floods through him. He shifts in place again. A strange tingle thrumming along his chest and belly. He washes the legs next, marvelling at them. "I wonder if you would walk differently if your demonic aspect had a different manifestation."

He doesn't know why he's talking to someone who can't answer back.

The angel pauses as he reaches the other's upper thighs. The penis there has finally gone soft. He considers leaving it, but Aziraphale knows how sweaty and unpleasant Wessex can be. Can cause all sorts of damp places. 

"Oh for heaven's sake," Aziraphale averts his eyes and takes the flaccid member in hand and holds his breath as he gives it two perfunctory strokes. Entirely clinical, as he's done before in similar situations. He lets out a sigh as Crowley's penis remains unchanged when he pulls the cloth away. "See? That erection meant nothing before. Just a natural, physiological reaction."

Goodness, why does he feel so dizzy again? His skin feels prickly all over. Like his whole body has somehow fallen asleep, as his legs are wont to do if he gets caught in a good book. He moves to the head of the tub and starts combing his fingers through that bright, Ishtar red hair loosening the braids further.

"You really are a remarkable creature," he breathes softly. "Sometimes I wonder…" _who it was you were, have we ever met before?_ "You really were quite striking, on the wall." The words come out in the smallest voice. "Such a beautiful combination… oh it's a shame you can't see yourself. In color, I mean.” He quietly combs his fingers through Crowley's hair. He runs his thumb carefully over the cuts and bruises along the other's face. He keeps his gaze resolutely on the demon's hair line. He takes extra care with a gash arcing along the right side of his skull, from the temple to just behind his ear.

"What happened here? Did some fancy bit of jewelry get dislodged? A hair ornament? Honestly, only _you_ could find a way to wear a helmet and come away with a head injury."

The last hurts taken care of, Aziraphale gets a small bowl and starts the process of soaking Crowley's hair. The water darkens the red into something resembling the sumptuous curtains they'd left behind in Chippenham. Water spills over the side of the bath, soaking the wool at Aziraphale's knees. When the magnificent hair is drenched, he draws as much of it into the water as he can. He rubs the strands between his fingers, breaking up the blood and dirt until it dissolves completely. His nails are soft as he combs along Crowley's scalp down to the ends.

"Your hair really is quite tickety-boo," he smiles to himself. "I hope you don't mind this soap. It has lavender and rosemary in it, isn't that a marvelous idea? They've gotten so clever, humans. I don't know where they come up with these ideas. I like to use it on my hair now and again and it's lovely."

He lathers the soap and works his fingers through Crowley's hair. There's more of it than one would think to look at it, despite being so fine. He gets lost in the sensations, the repetition of the motion hypnotic and soothing. The pull of silky smooth hair against his wet skin. The caress of the stands between his fingers under the water's surface. The faint resistance of Crowley's scalp as he follows the curve of his skull, dragging his fingertips. He stops when the serpent turns his head with an indistinct noise. "Oh, am I being too rough?" He gingerly lightens his touch, blinking fiercely. "Goodness, I suppose I ought to get you out!"

He gives Crowley’s hair one more rinse, his woolen trousers sodden as more water spills onto the floor. “Alright, up you get,” the angel gets to his feet and bends down to slide his arms into the water. His sleeves immediately get soaked, nearly up to his armpits. He hooks an elbow under Crowley’s knee and manages to wrangle the other one into place. He lets out a long breath as his other hand rests on Crowley’s ribcage, spine braced on the crook of his arm. It’s that shaky, trembling sensation of _relief_. He hasn’t felt it this intensely since…. Eden. When it first unfurled in his chest, pale green and bright like new spring leaves caught by the sun. Aziraphale blinks away a sudden wetness at his lash line. He hoists Crowley out of the bath, displacing even more water, his front hopelessly drenched. He suspects the other would laugh at the way he holds the demon above the bath. As though he can hope to contain the mess of water dripping from his limbs.

“Look at you, soaking wet and you don’t even weigh ten stone,” the words come out stilted and uneven. It isn’t enough to distract from the way his awareness has shrunk to the house of Crowley’s lungs underneath his palm. “You’re rather lucky that healing is just something I can _do_. Not something I have to explain. Well, not like a miracle, at least.”

Crowley’s arm dangles down, limp and heavy. Once Aziraphale has decided the other has dripped enough he lays him back down on the bed, making sure he settles the draping palm first before settling the rest. He sets the other on a thick cloth that serves as a towel. Aziraphale pulls out another one and starts rubbing the condensed water droplets away. “I hope this isn’t too rough.” He’s trying to skate the line between vigorous enough to be useful and gentle enough that it won’t bother any aches that persist. Once he’s satisfied Crowley’s body is dry enough he settles a blanket on top of the other, and he looks down at himself.

The angel wrinkles his nose, and he peels off his sodden clothes until he’s naked. Still smooth and Effortless as the day he first inhabited this corporation, although considerably filthier. He wraps a rough cloth around himself to stave off a chill, and he sits at the head of the bed with another smaller linen in his hands.

“I understand hair long as yours tangles something fierce if it isn’t taken care of right away,” he explains, lifting Crowley’s skull with two fingers, pulling the hair back and up, over the pillow. He sits, twisting the strands and squeezing out the excess moisture.

“I’m sure you know that, of course. It’s your hair, after all.” Aziraphale hums softly as he pulls the linen along the ends of Crowley’s hair again. “I do hope this is alright. I’ve never worn mine long like yours. I’m not certain it would be… well, I don’t think I could wear it like you.”

He lets the cloth rest on his knee and he pulls out a comb, a bright gold, decadent thing from Scythia. The spine of it is covered in sinuous, winged, many-headed, antlered serpents. Forty gold teeth, no longer than one of Aziraphale’s knuckles, drip down from the solid edge. Aziraphale holds his breath at the sight of gold sinking into red. All the glory of a sunset, here in his palm. “I picked this up ages ago,” he pulls his hand in what he hopes is a gentle fashion. The motion of it is soothing. It brings him the same sort of peace he feels when he’s deep in prayer. When he has a tome spread out beneath his fingers, sweeping over the smooth surface of the vellum. “Hm,” there is a certain satisfaction to taming Crowley’s hair. To watch the tangles smooth and unknot. “Perhaps I _should_ try growing my hair out, even once, if it’s this enjoyable.”

He watches the wet hair slide between the teeth of the comb. Aziraphale ignores the mild discomfort of filth and sweat still crusting over the rest of his body.

“Isn’t it fascinating? How some words can be both a color and something else? Do you know your eyes are the same color as the most precious metal? You should wear amber more, and those glasses less.” When they were last among the Balts, Crowley had worn several necklaces and other adornments made of the stuff. Utterly stunning. “You have all these beautiful shades wrapped up into one being.” Aziraphale sighs wistfully. “I feel so...drab sometimes. All the same color. Washed out. Oh well, at least I’ll be washed up soon.”

At last, Crowley’s hair is fully combed, pieces of it dry, hanging over the edge of the bed and the pillow in a sheet of spun cinnabar. Aziraphale lets out a sigh, and snaps his fingers, cleaning the floor and refilling the bath with warm clean water. It feels like Heaven on Earth as he slides in.

The angel lets out an appreciative groan as he finally washes the grime and smell of mud and metal from his skin. He decides against making an Effort again, a little uncertain if his arousal would be… sustained if he summoned it back so soon. Better to give it time. _Best be careful. No telling what state it will be in when it returns._

“Honestly, after four thousand and eight hundred-odd years—nearly five millennia! What on earth could have triggered an erection?” He eyes the smooth skin over his de-sexed pubic bone.

He’s never thought of himself as… deficient. He knew, in an idle sense, that his body had the capacity for such a thing, as it has the capacity for other things that Aziraphale saw no reason to make use of. Sneezing, for example. And lymph nodes. Though he’s never closed off the possibility of his Effort having such a reaction in the same way as he had shut off his lymph nodes and the less fun bits of the digestive tract, it’s also never… come up, as it were.

He’d just assumed, if such an event did come to pass that his Effort was _needed_ in some way, it would then make itself known. (The Lord works in mysterious ways, and all that.) And that would be the _only_ way his Effort would achieve a state of arousal.

“This has to be your fault. You always find a way to challenge my beliefs, foul fiend,” there isn’t any bite to it at all. Aziraphale eyes his sexless state once again. He’s had the Effort so long, he feels… incomplete without it. He runs a thumb over the spot where the base of his shaft normally sits. There’s a little bit of padding there, but if he presses his thumb hard enough, he can make out the curve of his pelvic bone. “I hope it behaves when it comes back. I rather miss it, helps fill in the breeches. And humans are quite particular about how they think other human-shaped beings should look.”

He absently kneads the flesh there, squeezing that soft skin and cushion of fat. “I don’t know what I should do if it doesn’t return to a quiescent state.” The thought of going the rest of his time on Earth without an Effort fills his chest with a pang. It’s not quite a security object, but it’s familiar and comforting, now that he’s been made aware of the absence. “Nonsense,” he scoffs. “Of course it will.” He shifts in place, a very faint, pleasant prickle from the curving shelf of flesh underneath his pubis. Something like relieving an itch or the sensation of massaging out a knot in one's neck.

Aziraphale looks down, suddenly aware of his hand pinching and pulling at nothing in particular. He jerks his hand away, stopping the mindless, fruitless act. His cheeks burn hot as an unbidden thought surfaces. _What would it feel like to do this while making an Effort?_ There’s an answering voice that sounds an awful lot like Crowley, but he blocks it out. No doubt the demon would be pleased to encourage onanism.

He finds the bar of soap, carried all the way from Syria, and he finishes scrubbing quickly. Once he's done, he dries off and throws on a fresh set of clothes. Simple and pale, like always. He hasn't worn anything truly daring or flashy since… well… He sighs and tries not to think of how they parted ways in Rome. 

He tracks down another set of clothes for the demon, confident he'll be safe alone in his quarters. They're black and likely far too big, but a little demonic miracle would see that right.

By the time he returns, Crowley is making restless motions on the bed. Aziraphale walks up slowly. When he gets close enough he can see the set of Crowley's grimace, hear the whine of protest trapped in a sleeping throat. A twitch flickers across the demon's face, his mouth lifts in an attempt at a snarl. "Oh, that won't do," Aziraphale gently lays a hand where Crowley's shin has slipped from under the coverlet. "Peace, and have a lovely dream about whatever you like best."

Instantly the demon relaxes, the muscles in his face go lax, though his eyes flicker behind closed lids.

Aziraphale sets the clothes at the foot of the bed, and he pulls out the latest notes Ælfræd had passed along for his translation of _Pastoral Care._ It's a fascinating decision and, assuming that Ælfræd is able to successfully repel the Vikings, he'll be interested to see the effect of the intentional spread and encouragement of the English language.

After several hours—judging by the numbness in his legs and the resulting pins and needles when he moves—Crowley finally stirs, his eyes fluttering open. The serpent wiggles decadently, then stretches, arms rising above his head, blanket riding down to expose a bit of his chest. One of those hands comes down and brushes over top of the coverlet on his stomach, and then he looks around the room, his eyes darting in a flurry. Finally, his gaze lands on the angel and he calms down a bit.

“Oh, ‘s you. ‘M guessing you were the one who took care of me?” The demon closes his eyes again, burrowing further under the heavy blanket once more.

“Yes, I patched up what I could discover, and I got the worst of the muck off. There’s clothes there, by your feet, if you want them.”

There’s a long, contented push of air through the serpent’s lips. “Haven’t felt this clean in a long time.”

It’s as close to a _thank you_ as has ever come between them. That warmth flares in Aziraphale’s chest again. Brighter, hotter. He sits up a little taller, not even bothering to hide his smile.

“Oh, good. How are your injuries? Did I miss anything?” He sets the writing aside.

“Mm,” Crowley shifts his neck from side to side. “Haven’t felt this fit and whole in awhile either. The wear and tear really creeps up on you, over the centuries.”

“There’s something to be said for not living as fast and hard as you do.”

“Haven’t been discorporated yet!”

Aziraphale feels his gut clench at the crooked smile on Crowley’s face. “It’s the ‘yet’ part that has me so concerned.” He swallows hard.

Crowley scoffs. "As if you should be concerned for me."

"I have concern for all of God's creatures. Your welfare included." The answer is automatic. As always.

"Pretty sure I'm specifically not 'one of God's creatures' anymore," there's a harshness to his features. Like he's made of stone or something worse beneath the skin.

_You were, once. Her signature is still on you, isn't it? She made you, even if you changed._

“Even so,” Aziraphale says instead, fiddling with the edge of his sleeve, deciding not to push. “I’m here to… take care of beings on Earth.” That was the broadest possible explanation of his heavenly duties.

“Don’t hold your breath for a thank you,” it doesn’t sound nearly as harsh or as rude as it is probably meant to.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Aziraphale’s lip quirks in a smile. “What sort of demon would you be, going around and thanking an angel?”

Crowley’s face does something complicated. A series of twitches and something like pain in his eyes. A scrape of teeth across his lips. He turns his head to face the wall of the ancient fortress.

“You really _do_ just pick me up at my lowest and prop me back up, don’t you?” Crowley laughs, but it sounds hollow. “You and that angelic selflessness. You’ll get yourself in trouble.”

“So what if I do?” Aziraphale can’t help the sudden coldness in his voice. He’s not about to put up with being made fun of again. “Why do you _care?_ ”

“What kind of question is that?” Crowley snaps at him, eyes narrowed into something dangerous.

“What it sounds like. You’re a demon, you love trouble. Why do you care? What does it matter to you?” _Sounds like something you should cheer about._

The demon groans, “Look, I’m _trying_ to say that I’m sorry I was such a bastard about it in the forties, alright? This isn’t easy for me! The oysters were… not terrible as far as food goes. It wasn’t a bad time. In fact, it was a very decidedly _not_ _bad_ time.”

The words hang between them. Suspended like motes of dust. It sears something in Aziraphale’s lungs. It’s an olive branch eight hundred and thirty seven years late.

"Why are you bothering to apologize? You don't even _like_ me!" They are work associates (of a sort) nothing more. He has to remind himself of that. Constantly. No matter what his angelic capacity for love might think otherwise. The demon’s head whips to face him sharply.

"I never said _that!"_ And then Crowley's eyes widen, as though he realizes what he's gone and said _now_. His face slowly turns red, infected by a blush.

"You did!" The angel frowns. "I'm sure of it, back in Rome when we…" he looks down at a spot on the floor next to his feet.

The silence that settles in the room is like a weight brought to bear on the remains of the demon’s ruined armor. Like a missing oyster shell swallowed down into a gullet.

When Aziraphale finally chances a glance towards the bed, Crowley looks so small and pathetic and _beaten_ he can't help but take pity on him. His hair threatens to spill over his face. "I said a lot of things, angel, but I never said _that._ I'd remember."

It's so peculiar how different a single word can sound.

Crowley's only ever called him _angel_ once before.

Aziraphale frowns, “Didn’t you? I could have sworn you said… at the very least you _implied_ , quite strongly-”

“I’d had… a very bad day.” Crowley pauses, then grimaces as he reconsiders, “More of a bad decade, really. But, it was better when we met up. I promise. I just… it was poor timing. And then Hastur showed up.” The serpent’s jaw shuts with an audible click. There’s a twist and an ache in Aziraphale’s chest.

The smell of blood is inextricably linked with that demon’s name.

“You don’t have to say anything more,” the angel says softly, reaching over to brush back those long hairs from the demon’s brow. _You’re forgiven._ He holds his breath, waiting for _something_ to strike him down for the blasphemous, presumptuous thought. “...Water under the bridge,” he says instead, and cards his fingers absently along Crowley’s scalp.

Aziraphale slowly starts to braid the demon’s hair. The strands are softer than he’d imagined they might be, now that they’re dry. They slip from his grasp, trying to defy his efforts to put them to rights. It’s grounding, to have something so mundane to focus on.

He’s never met this Hastur, and he doesn’t wish to. He hopes, fervently, that Crowley doesn’t see him often. _Perhaps I should pray on it._ His hands shake, and he hopes the other can’t feel it.

Last time Crowley was hurt it was by Hell. This time it was a human. _Next time it could be Heaven._

_Next time it could be you._

Aziraphale's heart hasn't hurt like this since watching half of his brethren fall.

He shudders as he imagines Crowley subject to the magnesium and lightning burn of a smiting. The flash paper fizzle of going up in smoke and flames. All the flesh and moisture boiled away. Nothing but a pillar of salt left behind.

If they hadn't both been out here maybe… Maybe Crowley wouldn’t have been hurt like this. Wouldn’t be at risk of a pragmatic blade cutting down an enemy before he can get up again. Wouldn’t be at risk for the terrible blood eagle sacrifice the Danes love. (Humans turn on each other all the time, they could easily turn on someone who gives them poor advice.) 

He remembers Crowley's offer. _'Be easier if we both stayed home.'_

_No. That's too much._ That would be found out too easily. _But if everything got done… And if only one of us ever goes… then there's no risk we'd have to fight one another._

"Ælfræd is planning to muster at Egbert's Stone," Aziraphale blurts out. The words fall out of his mouth without forethought or permission. "He's been gathering forces to take on Guthram."

Crowley blinks slowly. "Oh. Um?"

"Listen, you're in no state to go out anywhere.” He doesn’t care whether it’s the truth or something else. “You still need rest. Just... tell me what you need to do and I'll do it. And then I'll take care of my end of things and well… it'll end up a no score draw."

He fusses with the very tips of Crowley's hair. There’s suddenly a pile of tiny leather laces beside the pillow and he ties off the first braid.

“What is… What is Hell asking you to do?” Aziraphale holds his breath, fumbling to partition another lock of vibrant hair.

“Want me to set up a kingdom for Guthram,” he finally says, brows furrowed. “Political impact in the area. Details don’t matter. Hell doesn’t really care in whose name the killing is done or who people light a candle for. They just want as many pieces on the board as possible to play with.”

“Alright, I can… I think I can work with that. I’m supposed to make sure Ælfræd prevails and hangs onto Wessex. I’m sure there’s _something_ I can come up with.”

Crowley blinks long and slow.

“Of course, next time, well, you can, _you_ can do something for me! You won’t owe me a thing! And everything will get done, and, and, and… It’ll be okay! Everything will be okay.”

The demon is silent for a long time as Aziraphale struggles to braid his hair, but finally, a slow smile starts to spread across his face.

“Alright. I can work with that, yeah. I like that. I like the way you think, angel. You’ve got a deal.”

Aziraphale’s heart beats against his breastbone, like it’s trying to break free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also PHEW!! This one was hovering at like... 80-85% done for the longest time! I kept thinking I was so close... and then it turned out "close" meant "actually another 2.6K words"
> 
> I just want to thank everyone who cheerlead me through the final steps of this process lol. Noodlefrog, Tarek, everybody on the Soft Party House and GO-Events server. Also Tarek and Noodle for putting eyeballs on my work before this went up.  
> 
> 
> So in Wessex Alfred the Great was responsible for a lot of shaping what would become the English identity. He first tried to buy off the Danes, but they kept coming back. Guthram attacked Alfred in Chippenham during the Christian celebration of the 12th Night of the Christmas celebration. Alfred managed to escape to Sommerset until he mustered up enough troops to finally beat Guthram back. (Wessex was also one of the last standing Anglo-Saxon kingdoms against the viking/scandanavian raids). Eventually, Alfred gave Guthram a piece of Britain to call his own, Daneland, but he also baptized Guthram, gave him a new name, and made Guthram into his godson in a brilliant political move to not only give this dude what he wanted, but also to secure his loyalty. Alfred was also very into education was was very adamant that the clergy and judges etc throughout the land actually know English. He did a lot of administrative, theological, educational, and military reorganization. I also find it fascinating that he was illiterate as a child, and learned to read later in life. There are some interesting documentaries available on youtube if you have any further interest!
> 
> A hide is a particular territory within the kingdom itself responsible for both feeding a certain population, as well as supplying a certain number of soldiers when called on by the king. Reeves and thegns are various titles/nobility with various responsibilities, and cyning is an Old English word that eventually becomes "king" in modern English.


	4. False Dichotomy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The thing about hitting rock bottom,_ Crowley realizes in a bit of twisted optimism, _is that there's nowhere to go but up._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the rating has been bumped up! This chapter includes- sad wanking (with variable configuration of genitalia), alcohol references (and a very, very oblique drug reference), blatant disregard for historical dates ~~(don't @me)~~ and emotionally significant furniture. (This is a Sad Time update. Much angst.)

**[London 1862]**

Water isn't blue. Not really. It's clear. The angel's eyes are not blue. Not the human ones that decorate his corporation, nor the ones that are embedded into his body like Argus in the other plane of existence. They are clear. Layered. They change with the ambient light. Right now, they look blue and furious, but Crowley knows that it's a lie.

Holy water isn't blue.

_The impressionists have the right of it. Look at things from far away. Don't get too close. Try not to examine what’s going on too deeply. Use color and light to make an illusion._

"I'm not giving you a suicide pill Crowley!"

_I don't want it for me. I want it because the being who is my soulmate is a monster and I'd rather destroy him and lose every scrap of color in the world than lose you. Maybe you're not supposed to want to destroy your soulmate, but I do. I will. I don't care if I do._

But he can't say any of that.

He'd rather Aziraphale believe that he sees in black and white than know he was wrong all those years ago in Eden. Crowley does have a soulmate. He'd thought that the Almighty wouldn't bother, that demons, at least, were exempt, if not angels. _Why? Why him? Why me? What is it that makes you think I deserve him? Did I do something so terrible even I can't recall? What is it at the kernel of my soul that makes me worthy of Hastur? Maybe I should splash him and take a swig myself…_

Maybe Aziraphale does have a point. He bites his lip. _That isn't the point. Not really_. He just doesn't trust Hastur.

"That's not what I want it for, it's just insurance." Crowley hisses and shoves the scrap of paper towards Aziraphale again. He'd written it down mostly for the drama of it all. He hadn't thought the angel would actually refuse.

"I'm not an idiot Crowley! Do you know what sort of trouble I'd be in if they knew I'd.. If they knew I'd been fraternizing?"

Crowley doesn't miss that upward look. "Fraternizing!?"

 _Is that what you think this is? You think we could have something? Don't rub salt in the wound._ He wonders if Holy Water is saline. Is it fresh? Heaven of Old wasn't afraid of salt. He stifles a shudder as he thinks of Sodom and Gomorrah.

"Well—whatever you wish to call it."

 _I can't believe you thought this would ever go anywhere. What about your soulmate?_ Crowley has never asked. It is something he is certain would destroy him. Just as assuredly as holy water.

"I have lots of other people to fraternize with, _angel_."

"Oh, of _course_ you do."

"I don't need you!" He doesn't need this. Doesn't need this inconsiderate angel to see through his lie.

"And the feeling is mutual! Obviously!" Aziraphale adds the last word in a huff. Tosses the paper onto the pond where it ignites in a blaze of holy righteousness. Burns white, nothing like salt. The star-shade of magnesium set alight.

"Obviously," he mimics, not that Aziraphale is around to hear the parting blow.

Crowley is suddenly exhausted. He glowers at the swans and the ducks idly floating by.

He’s seen how Milori blue is made. Mix up iron and chloride and potassium and cyanide. Ferric and ferrous iron both. This makes a liquid bursting with deceptive potential, that same not-water blue. He wonders if he could precipitate the color by swallowing the solution. Would the infernal heat of him boil the rest of it away and leave behind nothing but that pure, distilled pigment?

Surely that would taste less bitter than the word _fraternizing._ If he eats enough of it, maybe it will draw the bitter tang of that word out of his bloodstream. Absorb it like a balm and pull it out of his system.

As if a creature like Crowley could paint his insides blue. As if he were made to filter out poison instead of retain it. _You’re so full of it your eyes are yellow._ Like the salt A. Milori uses to make his famous pigment—one half of the equation.

He could have crossed the channel with a thought, but it feels better to do it the human way, getting on the first boat to Callis out of Dover. (To be fair, he’s not sure how he got to Dover so quickly. That part is a bit of a blur.) It gives him time to stew and brood.

 _If holy water isn't fresh, it ought to be,_ Crowley realizes with sudden clarity. _How else can it claim to be so pure unless it’s free of… baser elements?_ “Like salt,” he says quietly, the taste of it on his lips.

He glares through his dark lenses at dark water. Water that’s full of salt and isn’t blue.

He hires a diligence to Paris. Pays an outrageous sum, and promises double if the driver can get him there in less than two days. He could take the train, but even the prospect of a private car is too much, too _crowded_. Too many people to subject himself to for nine hours. The driver promises them an early start in the morning, so Crowley settles into the most bougie, overpriced, tourist-gouging bar and drinks like a man who wants to preserve his insides for generations of future study.

The edge of his anger is finally dulled into annoyance as four in the morning rolls around. The driver—Pierre? Pascal? Paget?—has braved the dark miasma pervading the air to jostle his chair and let him know that they’re ready to leave.

“Your bags, monsieur?”

Crowley snaps his fingers irritably and gestures to a set of barrels beneath the table. “That’s it.”

Perrin, he’s almost certain it’s Perrin, bends down and settles them, one on each hip. “Er, but sir your _things?”_

“Don’t have any _things,_ ” Crowley says, curling his lip and draining his last goblet of the most drinkable watered-down wine in a thirty mile radius. “I’ll give you a guinea if you don’t ask anymore stupid questions for the rest of the journey.”

“This is France,” the man says, but he holds out a hand anyway.

Crowley is greeted with blessed silence and he’s allowed to clamber his way up into the coach and he shuts the door on himself with enough force that the vehicle sways, nearly tipping over on its wheels. He sinks into the bench, halfway spilled on the floor. He feels the movement of the car as Patrice loads his wine and, presumably, his own bags. The sky outside is still dark, the sun not yet risen, the whole of the countryside blanketed in darkness.

Against his better judgement, he gets out of the coach at one of their staging posts to pull out a cigarette. (Turkish make, not British. He has standards.) He debates between not giving a shit and lighting up with a thought or a bit of hellfire, but the novelty and cleverness of humanity’s little phosphate-tipped invention sold under Satan’s namesake is too good to resist. (And who hasn’t wanted to set their boss on fire now and then?) He strikes the match against the exterior of the diligence and sucks in the smoke, exhaling a fog of aromatic tobacco and poison. He brings the spent match head under his nose and revels in the comforting, scorched smell of it before he pulls in another lungful of nicotine and other colorful chemicals.

“Do you have a soulmate?” Crowley glowers at the man as he comes back from his piss break.

“No monsieur.”

“Good,” he spits, “you’re lucky.” He shoves the box of cigarettes into the man’s chest. All the better to keep him awake and form bad habits. Perfectly demonic.

“I hear that if you argue enough with your soulmate your color vision fades in and out and goes spotty.” The statement is phrased in such an absurdly careful way it is obvious the driver is trying not to frame it as a question.

Crowley snorts. If stabbing him in the stomach didn’t qualify as an _argument_ then their last altercation at Crowley’s quarter-century review certainly did, and his perception of color hadn’t wavered a bit. It never ceases to amaze Crowley at the number of old wives’ tales that spring up around this whole soulmate business.

He doesn’t say a word, just climbs up into the carriage again settles in for a good brood, accompanied by a far more dramatic and appropriate atmosphere.

He’s disappointed when there aren’t any bandits or highwaymen trying to waylay their journey. Crowley had hoped for someone to cross him, someone he could unleash his unholy rage onto. _What happened to the good old days of ‘Your money or your life’?_ Firearms were fascinating little inventions. Crowley likes it when he has the opportunity to swap out the ammunition. It does something awful to the human psyche to watch as something harmless explodes from the muzzle of a gun instead of bone-tearing, life-ending metal. Equally upsetting, apparently, is surviving a shot to the chest and swallowing a whole bag of bullets. (He’d been lucky that time he’d been hit in his left lung.)

When they pull into Amiens to allow the carriage driver to catch a little rest at a staging inn he’s struck by how childish his disappointment is. Still, he’s a demon and he’s not about to start feeling chastened for wanting to behave badly. So he does.

It’s not the same as putting the fear of the devil into a bunch of highwaymen, but there’s a certain terror that a man of means and a particular carriage that Crowley can muster by being a bad guest that’s almost as good.

He pulls a deep drag off the same cigarette he lit hours ago and lets the overpowering scent of Turkish tobacco fill the room. It’s not quite as offensive to the locals as it is to the British sensibilities and tastes, but it’s _strong_.

He settles into a miraculously open table by the fire and waves the innkeeper over and orders a bottle of the most expensive booze on hand, and lets his bad mood settle like a miasma over the inn. Crowley smiles just a little as he can feel it. The sunny disposition of the innkeeper’s wife takes a turn as the Turkish cigarette sets off a migraine. He unravels a tense business meeting by plucking at the web of elaborate lies underpinning the merchant’s arguments. The horsemaster in the stables hitches one of the inferior beasts to the passing mail coach, ensuring that the precious cargo to the places the rail does not go will be delayed. The flour in the kitchen goes off—though with the standard of fare in most coaching inns, it’s doubtful anyone will notice.

Misery loves company.

He snaps at the innkeeper, not caring that the demonic thing beneath his skin presses closer to the surface. Somewhere in the cellar, about half the barrels turn to vinegar. Crowley should sleep, he’s tired enough for it, but he can’t bring himself to leave the table.

He sits by the fire instead, and drinks. He tries not to think about how hollow he feels. Crowley tries not to think about the liquid that passes through his lips, over his tongue, and down his throat. Tries not to think about how wine is always better shared. Tries not to think about any liquids at all.

He tries not to think about anything at all.

***

Crowley hits the streets of Paris at night. He gives Paul the rest of his coin, plus a little extra. After a moment’s thought, he curses the horses. Fuckers know what they did. He should hail a hackney, but he doesn’t. He winds his way on foot through the streets into the less prestigious areas of town.

Signposts marking the street names rotate 90 degrees in his wake.

He climbs up the newly installed fire escape once he gets to the building he’d chosen as his destination. Up five flights of ladders and stairs where he limbers in through the window of the topmost, ramshackle apartment posing as a studio. There’s a skylight streaked with grime and three generations of filth worked into the floorboards.

There’s a gas lantern lit in the corner of the room, throwing out heavy shadows, and a redheaded figure sits perched on a rickety stool with their back to the window, a paintbrush in hand and a thin piece of wood covered in daubs of oil paint in the other. A rough leather smock is wrapped around a dark, tight jacket.

Crowley steals in without a word and throws himself on the threadbare, moth-and-mouse-devoured couch. One of the legs wobbles and threatens to give way. His whiskers are nowhere near as harsh as the fabric beneath his cheek. He curls up in a futile attempt to get comfortable. For as many bones as his spine has, there’s no configuration of vertebrae to make this piece of furniture bearable.

A few moments pass before a husky voice finally breaks the silence.

"Back again?"

The details on how this friendship started—if one could call it that—are a little hazy. Lost to cheap Scotch and an unfortunate cocktail mixed with turpentine. (He’s fairly certain the human hadn’t noticed though.) They are sometimes Jean and sometimes Eve, but mostly they are Jean Eve.

They don’t resemble Eve in the slightest—except maybe in the way their jaw sets when they’re being stubborn. 

"Yes. Here to stay, I 'spect."

"How was the jewel of the empire, Monsieur Carabosse?" There’s a smile coloring that voice.

"Don't ask," Crowley says darkly.

"Hmm. I see. You and your angel not getting on?"

“Ngh.” He curls up tighter into a ball. _Should have kept my big mouth shut._

“Well, if you can stand the fumes, you’re welcome to stay.”

“I’ve had worse.” He pauses. He keeps his tone carefully casual as he addresses the back of the couch. “You know you should be careful of the invitations you give out.”

“You know I don’t get along well with other human beings,” he can hear the corner of Jean Eve’s mouth lift from across the room. “So you needn’t worry about the possibility of other people interrupting your sulk.”

“I make a devil of a houseguest.”

“Stay or go as it pleases you. I’m an angel of a host.” The demon snorts at that.

“Why aren’t you featured in the Salon yet?” Crowley finally rolls over onto his elbows to look at Jean Eve’s latest painting. A larger than life work on canvas. Crowley can just make out a face against the sea of rainbow of paint colors behind it. (The glasses help.) Right now they’re putting spots of pale yellow along the brow and nose of the subject, little dabs of oil that look like pats of butter against the palest blue and a bevy of other colors. He pushes his glasses up to his forehead and he squints. It’s easier to see across the room like this, though parts of the image vanish into the dizzying array of colors, invisible to him.

“You know those fools can’t properly see my work. They’re cursed, just like you. Perhaps in their old age, when they are alone and their sight lost, then they might be able to appreciate me.”

“I could make it happen in your lifetime, if you want,” Crowley says for the hundredth time. He _has_ to make it happen. It’ll shake things up. Get people talking, disrupt social order. The really _good_ shit that makes the whole awful exercise of human existence worth a damn. His voice is velvet and laden with temptation, “I know people. You really should be better about exploiting my connections. What sort of artist are you?”

“The Salon is not the voice of God from on high, and even if it was I’m not sure that would dispose me to care anymore about their good opinion.”

“Do you care about _anyone’s_ good opinion?”

“No.”

“And _that_ is why you’re living in a hellhole, half-freezing to death every winter, and fucking starving all the time!”

Jean Eve pauses long enough to cast a withering glance over their shoulder at Crowley. “I don’t care about your good opinion either, mon frère.”

The demon clicks his teeth and rolls over with another snarl.

It isn’t the paint fumes that end up driving him out, not even the turpentine, but the linseed oil.

The smell of it makes him think of a bookshop he's seen entirely too much of over the last sixty two years. Of leather books and parchment and gold leaf.

He has a suite of apartments across town. They manifest out of the ether, like reverse fog, summoned back from where he'd banished them. Rue Ciel only exists when Crowley needs it, and tonight it is needed.

It's dark as he crosses the threshold. And cool. The exposed timbers yawn around the space like a cave. He tromps up the stairs, angry again, loosing his overcoat and cravat as he goes.

 _“Angels,”_ he hisses aloud. “Who does he think he is anyway?” The cravat ends up tossed on a banister, dangling precariously as he makes his way deeper into the maze of his den. A twisting spiral of maddening curves and passageways, though his path is marked by the breadcrumbs of clothing as he goes. A hat on the floor. An insufferably tight waistcoat next.

He pauses outside the door to his study, leans against the doorway to unlace his boots with an anger revolutionaries past had reserved for aristocrats. He tosses the first against the wall with a satisfying _thunk._ The second is launched rudely down the hallway.

The study, as all gentleman’s studies should, contains vast amounts of alcohol and a globe. The wall is littered with navigational charts and sky maps, the latter more accurate than the former. Leo’s sketch is rolled up somewhere in the corner. There are two bookshelves, lined with various tomes, a desk of black marble large enough to sleep a family of six on, and a sofa with scrolled arms and a tulipwood frame he’d stolen from some nobleman’s party on a dare some seventy-odd years ago. A pointless, stupid game to impress. Why’d he done it at all?

Ah, yes, of course. He’d been posing as a highwayman at the time. Brushing elbows with the elite at their _tons_ and their parties and then scaring them shitless at night. He runs a finger over the curved edge of an arm. After several moves across the continent and the channel, it’s certainly seen better days. (Though it’s a damn sight better than what the human currently has passing for furniture.)

_“I could steal anything from these twats. Anything. All high and mighty in here, but when you shove them into a tiny box on wheels in the dark suddenly they’re a lot more eager to please.”_

_“Really, anything at all?”_

_“Sure. Anything.”_

_“How about this sofa we’re sitting on then?”_

_“An-y-thing!”_

_“Oh, but you couldn’t possibly make off with something like this, my dear boy. Not without a miracle. It’s one thing to brandish a gun about and cry ‘Stand and deliver!’ but a true gentleman thief could get anything his heart fancied.”_

_“Alright then angel, you’re on. I’ll make off with this before the night is out and I won’t use a blasted miracle to move it, just watch me. And… I’ll do it with style.”_

Crowley throws himself on the sorry excuse for a chaise, hunkers into the sagging middle. The brocaded fabric is soft, and worn in all the right ways, for what it lacks in support after so many years of service. The outlandish, ostentatious floral pattern still holds against the ravage of time.

He peels off his gloves and they land on the floor with the sharp slap of leather on wood. 

“Anything, huh?” He bares his teeth and there’s a strange dual sensation that spears through his chest. A wire of heat weaving around his sternum while his heart clenches around a gaping vacancy. Like all the structures and valves and atriums contained within are gone, leaving nothing but a spasming emptiness. Useless.

Crowley curls in on himself for a moment, crooking his face into his arms. Trying to stop himself from scenting at the fabric. The smell of Aziraphale is long gone, but he _remembers_ it each time—every time—that he tries to recapture it.

Aziraphale wears a different cologne now. Something cool even as it tickles the nose with the threat of burning. Eucalyptus and mint and freesias. Crowley pulls his head out of his arms and abruptly shoves his face into the fabric on the back of the chair and draws in a lungful of air through his nose. His glasses press uncomfortably against his cheeks and the arches of his brows. He traps a huff in the back of his throat and rips them off his face. The world crowds in with alarming brightness. The back of the chaise is Homer’s _oînops póntos_ —his wine-dark sea—layered with the awful, sickening, purifying, _perfect_ gold of an angelic sunrise. He doggedly presses his face into the tightly woven fabric again. He can remember how Aziraphale used to smell. Like the last, late burst of life in autumn. Cool and drinkable, earthy and rich. Something green and riotous. Like Eden so long ago and far away, the wet scent of rain on slate underneath.

_Fuck this is so pathetic. He isn't even for you. Why'd you go and get all upset? Fraternizing. Like that's ever been a thing._

His mouth tastes like the ocean, nacre and the phantom scrape of oyster shell on his tongue. He reaches up and fists the back of his head, remembering gentle hands setting braids to right.

"Stupid," he hisses aloud. "Fucking stupid if you _ever_ thought…" He's so _furious_ with Aziraphale.

And he _wants._ Wants so bad it burns him through his core. He presses his face against the plush fabric, pretends it's a different kind of softness with a different kind of smell. Something to chase the scent of linseed oil and old paper and vellum from his nose.

He grits his teeth. _"Fraternizing_ ," the fucking bastard. He's had dreams of how he'd like to _fraternize_ with the angel. He opens the fly on his pants and bends his serpentine tongue over itself, undulating in a way where he can pretend it’s someone else's alongside his own.

He presses his forehead a little harder against the back of the chair and hunkers as much as he can in the corner of it. It's almost like being held.

_We can't ever fraternize when you have someone better waiting._

It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it _hurts_. But he imagines it anyway. Pictures Aziraphale pawing at him. A fist clenching in his hair, fingertips dragging down the center line of him.

 _Call it what it is angel. You're just wasting time with me._ But it’s tempting, so tempting to imagine what it might be like, if the universe were ordered just slightly different. If he were _worthy_ of someone like Aziraphale.

He imagines how their meeting could have gone. He could have climbed the wall, both their worlds exploding in a riot of color and new sensation. A shared moment of confusion, where they’d be forced to rely on each other to help navigate the opening of a new sense. Of a mystery of God unveiling itself before them. Where they’d lean, shoulder to shoulder, Crowley under that blessed wing, and give the colors their own secret names—let Adam and his ilk keep theirs.

Of all the times he’s touched himself while thinking of the angel this has to be the lowest of the low.

 _The thing about hitting rock bottom,_ Crowley realizes in a bit of twisted optimism, _is that there's nowhere to go but up._

He clutches at the back of his head tight enough his knuckles start to hurt. The steady pull against his scalp is grounding. The fingertips of his other hand skate down over his navel and lower, raking through a thatch of red hair as he slips them past the top of his drawers.

Crowley gnaws at his lip, the brocade of the upholstery catching against the skin. He’s certain that Aziraphale owns a vest that feels just like this. A lavish, embroidered waistcoat wrapped around his shirt of sky blue for fancy dinner parties. He wraps his hand around the base of his cock, as he pictures himself across a heavenly lap. Spilled over from where his head lays atop pillowed thighs and a firm hand crushing him close. Aziraphale would be methodical. Just as he is with his brush and the linseed oil and the gold leaf for his books.

_“Now then,” Aziraphale tightens his hand around the base of Crowley’s shaft. "Whatever shall I do with you? However is one, humble angel expected to bring a wayward demon to heel?”_

Crowley swallows and resists the urge to pump his fist for a moment. He shakes his head, and tries again. _That’s not it. Start over._

_"My dear—"_

_"Foul fiend—"_

_“Detestable demon—”_

_"It's just some simple fraternizing—"_

Crowley hisses softly, thumb twitching. No, no, _no_ , none of those are right! He lets out an annoyed breath, pumping his hand as he tries to cobble together something resembling a coherent fantasy.

 _"You needn't say a word, you wicked, awful thing. In fact, I prefer it. I'm very angry with you my dear."_ (Alright, fine, he can start in the middle then.)

_Crowley swallows as the angle of his grasp merely lets those fingertips drag down his cock._

_"That's what you want, isn't it? I'll show you the wrath of Heaven, vile tempter, since you're so eager to have it delivered.”_

_He bares his fangs with a hiss as those fingers wrap one by one around his shaft. “So what if I do? Why do you care?” The words taste bitter on his tongue. Aziraphale merely tuts._

_“What kind of question is that?"_

_"What it sounds like," he sneers, giving himself dignity he doesn't deserve or possess._

_"You are the most vexing thing in Creation, you know that? What am I to do with you?”_

_“If you’re waiting f’r ‘n apology, you can forget it,” he slowly tries to demolish his lower lip beneath his fangs. He’d already apologized once before, and it had taken nearly eight hundred and thirty seven years. He isn’t about to do so now, so soon, when he wasn’t even out of line._

_“Oh no. I shan’t take an apology from you. You misunderstand.” That soft hand gives a hard squeeze. “I don’t want you to be sorry, my dear boy. I want you to be the thing you always are, the only thing a demon can be.”_

He slithers in place along the couch, holding back against the urge to mindlessly fuck into his own hand. The skin along his back tingles hot and electric—like a bolt of lightning scorching his shoulder blades—before his wings erupt into being. The sound of fabric tearing rends the air, and he shivers as torn silk drapes over his spine. He gasps into the padded upholstery again. He feels a shudder go through his wings, all his feathers standing on end, the rustle of them fills the study. He uses the long stretch of them to press himself against the back of the couch, freeing his other hand to slide down and settle over his hip.

_Crowley sucks in a labored breath, and he slowly thrusts against a punishingly tight hand. “A’right… Alright… I was wrong.”_

_"There, was that so hard?"_

_Crowley lets out a mad, wet sort of chuckle._ A bit of clear fluid leaks down over the back of his knuckles. _“Aziraphale—” he bites back the word ‘please.’_ He tries to disappear into the seam between the seat and the back of the chaise. Like the crawling thing he is at heart trying to return to its burrow.

There’s a sharp flash of pain at his lower lip. A bright, hot knife-point, followed by the taste of copper and an ache that spreads through the rest of his lip. He runs his tongue over the gouge his fang left behind, and it sparks another bright flare of pain.

He draws a wing in tight, laying it over himself, tucking his head underneath its shade. He presses his bleeding mouth into the black silk at his shoulder.

_“Oh, trying to hide? That won’t do.” A knuckle drags along his primaries before the angel’s grip settles at the back of his head again, angling his chin sharply upwards. Into those eyes that aren’t blue. They’re dark, like the leavings on one of Milori’s many crucibles. “There you are.”_

There’s a pathetic sound on the air, a wordless squeak from his own throat. He _burns._ Like someone in the seventh circle has carelessly left a white-hot poker lying in his chest, the brand of heat searing down through him right into the shaft in his palm.

_“Angel,” is all Crowley can say._

_“Yes, I am,” Aziraphale agrees._

_“You have a soulmate,” his voice cracks on the word._ His right eye burns like a star, rivaling the fire in his chest. Easily more painful. The sound of his feathers raking against the floor and sofa seems louder than the sound of flesh on flesh.

_“Yes, I do,” Aziraphale agrees again, polite as anything._

_“Why? Why do this?” He chokes on the air in his functioning lung and shudders as that hand moves again, a thumb dragging along his weeping slit at the height of the motion._

_“Why? Goodness, that does seem to be your favorite question. You tell me why.”_

_“Because I don’t count,” Crowley whispers, his breathing coming in ragged._

_“Why else?”_

_“Because I don’t deserve this.”_

Crowley’s hips twitch as he slows the motion of his hand into something agonizing.

_“Indeed. Why is that?”_

_“‘Cuz I’m a liar,” he whimpers._

_Aziraphale twists his wrist with each slow, brutal pump of his hand. “Why do you lie to me?”_

_“Nggh… Ah.. Don’t make me say it.” He can feel an unbearable heat pooling in his sex. His eyes squeeze shut, all he can feel is the wet slip of skin against his cock._

_“Why do you lie?” The questions are as relentless as the hand between his legs._

_“Hn! A-ah, 'cuz I‘m a… uhn… ‘m a demon.” He shudders as his prick is suddenly bereft, then he yelps as a sharp slap lands on his buttocks, The hand returns, hot and slick as before._

_“What’s the real reason you lie to me?” Aziraphale tilts the angle of his wrist, as if to admire the cock in his hand. Appraising it like any number of books he’d acquired over the years. A thumb runs gently along the seam of his exposed balls, lightly pulling them away from his body for a moment. It’s an unbearably delicate touch._

_“Because I see in color just like you,” Crowley’s voice breaks._

The demon pulls his knees into his chest, arms and wings coming up to cover his head. He lets out a frustrated, furious groan. _Don’t think of him right now, fuck!_ Archduke Hastur is the _last_ fucking being in all of existence that he wants to think about, but what else _can_ he think about? He’s the whole bloody reason for this fight in the first place!

Crowley growls and grabs at the remains of his shirt, finishing the job of tearing it off his narrow frame. He brushes his palm with the silk before he throws it to the floor in disgust. The blood in his mouth is harder to ignore, but he’s had far worse.

“Can’t even get through a halfway decent wank fantasy without bollocksing it all up.” If one’s definition of a ‘halfway decent wank fantasy’ includes the requirement of leaving behind the awful, lingering sensation of a knife to the chest.

His cock throbs, annoyingly still hard, though not quite as insistent as it had been moments ago. Crowley shifts a little lower towards the foot of the sofa, but nothing changes—even after five, excruciating, agonizing, _boring_ minutes. He glares down at the offending appendage, nudging aside his feathers. His own personal Benedict Arnold, a turncoat. Turncock.

“Look, you may as well leave. ‘M not gonna toss one off to that bastard even in the abstract.” Any self-respecting erection should have the good grace to wither at the mere thought of his soulmate.

Another five minutes tick by, and Crowley can still feel his pulse at the end of his prick.

The demon presses his face forward and muffles a shout into the seventy year old brocade, trying to ignore the pounding between his legs. Maybe he’ll burn the sofa after this. Maybe he’ll burn the damn thing right now and use it for a makeshift funeral pyre. Not like it goes with the rest of his décor.

Crowley reaches between his legs and decides to try a different tack. Something more tried and true. There are an embarrassing number of fantasies, really. All ready to play on an endless loop at a moment’s notice. Like strips that can be fed into a zoetrope. Right next to Milton Bradley’s _‘Series 1: Raining Pitchforks’_ one might find _‘An Alternate Ending to That One Night in Rome_.’

The angel does look good in a toga, but he can’t quite bring himself to revisit Petronius’ restaurant. He’d been fucking _awful_ to the angel that night and that fact cleaves too close to the surface of his thoughts right now.

He swallows as he has the sudden thought, again, of hands combing through his hair. Wessex. The Arrangement. Only they hadn’t known it was going to _be_ The Arrangement at the time. The angel had been posing as a lord, it would have been _right_ to seal their agreement with a kiss. The done thing in those days. Crowley licks his palm, twice, and takes a hold of himself.

Some of the details are hazy. A byproduct of blood loss, he supposes. He remembers Aziraphale had pulled him out of the mud and carried him. A hundred miles, wasn’t it? Something ridiculous. Said something like he could carry Crowley across the world, no sweat, like that’s something acceptable to say to your _hereditary enemy._ Taken him back to a keep that no longer exists. Where the only (visible) mark of Ælfræd’s influence on the area is a marker where there's no longer a trace of the abbey he built there. _Good riddance._

He still remembers waking up clean and cared for. Clean, being the operative word.

Why had he been so _stupidly_ unconscious while the angel had bathed him!?

He can’t quite remember how it had come about, how he had finally convinced Aziraphale that The Arrangement was a workable solution. He finds that most of his memory is taken up by Aziraphale braiding his hair. (That part he’s never forgotten.) Well, the fewer details the better. Just means that it's easier to make shit up.

Like the feeling of Aziraphale helping him sit up. Like that cool-water feeling he’d once felt in Babylon. _(Blue. It felt blue. The opposite of red. The other end of the color spectrum.)_ And who could blame an angel for being curious? For dragging his fingers down the demon’s front once it was healed? For wrapping a hand around his cock and climbing into what passed for a bed with him?

_“You’ll mess up my hair,” Crowley presses a grin against the curve of the angel’s shoulder._

_“I’ll fix it again,” Aziraphale’s fingers creep in between braids and loose strands, fist eagerly pumping along both of their Efforts._

_“I’ll get dirty,” he bites at that plush, soft neck._

_“I’ll bathe you again,” the angel promises into his ear, breath hot and damp in a wonderfully human way. Goosebumps spring up all over his skin._

Crowley realizes he's panting with something of a start as his hips jump wildly without his control.

_“I’ll be executed as a Dane,” he sucks his way up Aziraphale’s jugular until he can nibble at the earlobe there._

_“I’ll protect you.”_

_But you won’t,_ is the last coherent thought Crowley has before he comes.

He shudders through his release; his wings arch behind him, pressing his stomach into the couch just in time to smear his spend into the embroidery. There are awful, wracking breaths stuttering out of both his lungs, choking him as he rides out his ecstasy. It’s intense, almost painful, too much, and he finally collapses in a puddle of coiling joints and feathers, gasping for air like a drowned thing.

His wings rattle with every motion of his ribcage, and he’s still trembling. His muscles feel like jelly, but he’s shaking anyway. Like his body is overcome with chills. He can feel tear tracks on his cheeks, but he’s not crying despite his lung's best impression at sobbing. _What the fuck?_ He clutches the back of the couch and draws his wings in tight.

He slides a foot under the lip of the cushion backing the sofa, followed by a knee and an elbow. There's just enough room for his whole leg and his forearm. His wings complete the shelter, cocooning him in something tight and dark that helps him slow his stuttered breaths. Crowley’s eyes slide shut, and that reptilian part of his hindbrain takes over. The urge to disappear into the waiting burrow overwhelms him completely and, for a moment, his skin shifts. As if considering sloughing off his limbs entirely, but he holds his current shape.

When he finally stops shaking he slowly blinks and takes stock. He feels winded, exhausted, like he's run a trillion miles across the universe.

"Bloody heaven." Crowley isn't sure what to make of what just happened. It was definitely the most powerful orgasm of his life. Powerful in the same way a black hole is, or an interdimensional, all-consuming monster. (The two aren’t so different, really.) The strangest side-effect is the total lack of anger or sadness. He just feels used and hollowed out, the complete physical exhaustion only marred by a lingering confusion.

_Those were some weird fucking aftershocks._

He squints his slitted pupils suspiciously towards his Effort. "That's enough out of you for a while." Crowley snaps, and the mess vanishes along with his genitals. He squirms uncomfortably at the sudden absence of sensation. It doesn’t feel quite right, not quite himself, but clearly there’s something wrong with his corporation. Maybe a day or two in this state will help set it to rights. He draws his limbs from the crevice at the back of the sofa and he pulls his pants and drawers back up. He scowls and tugs at the groin until the fabric shrinks and fits right again. “You’re lucky I didn’t get rid of you before,” though he’s not sure who he’s warning, now that his offending cock is gone.

Crowley presses a thumb against his lip and sucks sharply against his teeth. “Nk. Shame lip piercings aren't in right now.” Well, at least in _this_ part of the world it isn’t the done thing. He’ll have to wash up. Get something to rinse the taste of blood out from between his teeth.

He busies himself with grooming his wings. It’s been ages, and it gives a purpose to his hands while he thinks of _anything_ else to do that won’t involve the angel. Or thinking about the angel.

“Should go back to Jean Eve’s. Nothing to do here.” He’ll think of something. He always thinks of something. 

On his way back he stops and picks up three tubes of paint. Mars red, bone black, and aureolin—cobalt turned gold.

“I am going to live on your couch for the next sixteen hours,” he announces grandly as he dumps the tubes on a crate striving valiantly to serve as a table. He tosses a coin purse down as well.

“So you say.” The stool has moved half a foot to the left. Jean Eve stands in a loose undershirt and a pair of pantalettes, smock and other clothes abandoned. Crowley suspects if he looks in the cracked pedestal sink off the bedroom, he’d see a jacket freshly scrubbed and hung to dry.

“There’s a bag of money on the table in exchange for your gracious hospitality. Don’t bother feeding me. I will, however, take the cheapest, most godawful booze money can buy.”

“What about tiny cheeses?”

Crowley purses his ruined lip into a scowl. He fucking _loves_ tiny cheeses.

“I mean, if _you_ want some small cheeses, I’m not going to stop you.”

There’s a long stretch of silence. The only sound is the gentle bristles of horsehair on canvas. He feels his eyes start to grow heavy.

That husky voice breaks the silence just as he's about to nod off, “Worried the dairy will spoil your sulk?"

Crowley growls quietly. Most mortals in possession of their senses tend to find that terrifying, but most mortals haven't seen him drunk and mooning over his hereditary enemy. _“Shuttup.”_

“I see you did not take my advice, did you?” There’s the sound of paint being pushed around on wood.

“I _told_ you that’s not what it’s like between us!” _Isn’t like, can never be like, won’t ever be like._

“So what _is_ it like?” There’s a soft clatter of wood on wood as they pick out another paintbrush from their stash on the floor.

The demon snorts. “Now? Nothing. He’s clearly not interested in continuing our—” _fraternization_ “—association, and I told him to fuck right off.”

Jean Eve sighs wearily.

"Such a waste… Let's say your Monsieur Grenouille were to die tomorrow... What would you do if you still saw the world in color?"

_As if he'd do me the favor._

"First off, that'll only happen if my—if Monsieur Angel helps me out—which he won't. He thinks it's my funeral. Second off, you're fucking mad if you think… There's _no way_ he's my soulmate. I'd… nngk. I saw… My vision turned before we even met."

They press on, in that obnoxious way only humans can do when they lecture an immortal being as if they know better, know everything,"But if Monsieur Grenouille isn't your _only_ soulmate…"

"It's not possible." Crowley's teeth click together harshly. How could Hastur prove anything else? _You can't go from the lowest of the low to something holy on high. It only works the other way around._ He's got first hand experience with that.

“You know you don’t have to have a relationship with your soulmate to be happy. You could settle down with anyone. Even someone who is colorblind.”

Crowley rolls over onto his side to glare at the back of those narrow shoulders, sunglasses pushed up to his forehead. “So could you,” he points out.

Jean Eve shakes their head, “Absolutely not. I don’t want that, and besides… what if I ended up meeting a soulmate by accident? I’d no longer see the world in the same way!”

“Would that be so bad?”

They turn to face him, lips drawn into a deep frown. "If I have a soulmate, that would destroy my work, the point of me."

_Isn't the point of life to try and be happy?_

“More to life than work,” Crowley points out.

“Not for me. This is all I need to be happy,” Jean Eve gestures to encompass their little hovel and the canvas.

“I _know_ that isn’t true. Your definition of happiness includes absinthe and a bottle of Vin Mariani,” his lips curl into a smile, despite himself.

“You forgot a good cigar.”

“So _unfashionable._ Cigarettes are where it’s at now,” he squeezes the tip of his tongue between his teeth in a cheeky sort of gesture.

“Go to sleep, _ravageur_.”

Crowley finally notices the dark circles beneath their eyes. How he’d missed them, he wasn’t sure. They made Jean Eve’s pale face and dark eyes skull-like with the gas light throwing dramatic shadows all over the room. “What about you? You look half-dead on your feet.”

Jean Eve waves a dismissive hand. “Don’t worry about me. The work will sustain me. Man cannot live on bread alone.”

 _That requires you eating bread in the first place._ “How about tiny cheeses?”

“Perhaps that will be enough. Madame Laurent has been kind to me so far this year.”

“Give it time,” Crowley said, finally taking off his coat in order to lay on something remotely comfortable.

“I should think I am allowed some credit,” Jean Eve laughs. “I haven’t driven you away, after all. Perhaps there is hope for me yet, ah? I might keep this patron an entire year before she tires of my novelty.”

“Before you’re an insufferable, stubborn ass that mouths off to her, you mean,” Crowley clarifies with a fondness warming his black and battered heart.

He rolls back over and the couch groans in protest. Crowley glares at it before he closes his eyes. “Got you s’more paint.” He spares a demonic miracle to send the bedbugs in the apartment to Colonel Sibthrop’s estate instead. “Should paint a picture of me using those. ‘Ll buy you a canvas ‘n everything.”

“That could be fun. A small one.”

Crowley makes an agreeable noise in response. That can wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow… tomorrow…

***

When Crowley wakes next he can smell food on the air before he even opens his eyes. Bread and cheese. He can feel the crease of the fabric weave pressed into his cheek. Without opening his eyes he rolls onto his back and rests his elbow across his eyes.

“Ah, so you are still in the land of the living.” Jean Eve’s voice sounds remarkably close.

“By some definition,” Crowley mumbles. He shifts in place, every bone in his five thousand year old body regretting his choice to sleep on this particular couch.

“Open your mouth,” Jean Eve’s weight settles on the arm of the sofa and it creaks dangerously. Crowley furrows his brows, still and unmoving.

“Wha—” a soft sliver of cheese forces its way past his lips. Crowley makes a soft noise and slowly chews over the morsel. The flavor explodes across his tongue. It's nutty and rich, but gentle. He can taste the grasses and heather used to feed the sheep somehow. The texture is soft, not quite mushy. “‘S good.” It irritates him that he can’t place it. He knows it’s from some god forsaken little corner of France. He can’t stop the reflexive thought _Aziraphale would know_ , and his hands clench into fists. “‘S good,” he says again, and slowly sits up, stacking his vertebrae back into place one at a time.

“There’s more,” Jean Eve says. “I’m sure you didn’t eat yesterday.”

“Nope,” Crowley agrees. _And neither did you, I’ll bet._ He yawns and tries to keep his jaw from opening too widely, arms stretching overhead. “Or the day before that.” He stops as he takes in the spread on the small crate before him. A plate of the smallest cheese wheels and cheese wedges is there next to a jar of raspberry preserves and a buttery, fluff-topped loaf of brioche.

The aftertaste of cheese turns to ash. To blood-soaked desert sands. _Paris was a mistake. This whole city was a bloody mistake._ He stares unblinkingly at the repast. He’s quiet long enough that he realizes Jean Eve said something, is waiting on a response. He looks up and fumbles for something, anything to say.

“Is that _brioche?_ ” The words drip from his mouth like molten thallium.

“Should I have gotten crepes instead?” Jean Eve lifts a brow.

It’s like dropping one of those clever little Lucifers he admires so much into a barrel of kerosene.

“No one asked you to _feed me_ ,” he snarls, lurching up to his feet. There’s a moment of dizziness. A curtain of pins and needles raining down across his vision.

“You’re _welcome_ ,” Jean Eve says pointedly. He wishes that first bite of cheese hadn’t been so good. Crowley glares down at them, and wishes that they could see the true color of his eyes. An inverse of the message he was originally supposed to send to mortals. _Be very afraid!_

He puts a curse on the flat to ruin Jean Eve's light on the way out the door.

***

Spreading misery and chaos around Paris loses its lustre five or six hours, and he’s slowed down considerably. In the last twenty minutes alone he’s caused a thread shortage in a coat factory, caused an illegal duel to be arranged, diverted funds from charitable coffers into a dozen new absinthe cabarets, and freed hundreds of chickens from their cages at the poultry market.

It’s all so _senseless_ , there’s no _payoff_. He needs a scheme. A plan. A project. Something that even _Aziraphale_ can’t ignore, something to force him to fly across the channel to thwart—Crowley’s brow twitches. A carriage horse throws a shoe on the other side of the street.

His veins are full of lit kerosene again, and his feet take him back to Rue Ciel. Back to his study and the couch, where he summons back his cock and fucks his fist while he tells Aziraphale he doesn’t need him. _See how much I don’t need you? I have my own hands. These pickers and stealers._ He clutches the back of the sofa, standing on his knees in a haze of anger and grief. _I don’t_ need _you to thwart me. I can do wicked things for myself. Don’t have to balance the scales anymore, I can do what I want._ He doesn’t have to consult anyone about accidentally stepping on Heaven’s toes or being too wicked, too fiendish, too much. He can just _do_ things, and he ignores the ache in his heart at how lonely that thought is.

 _Just a misplaced demonic urge for lurking and conspiring. That’s all the Arrangement was. Nothing more. I’ve always worked better alone anyway. Stupid idea, getting involved with you. I didn’t need you._ He gasps through his teeth and shudders as he comes, arching over the back of the venerable chair helplessly. He trembles through it, sinking down into a heap against the faded brocade, though it’s the normal amount. Not the strangeness from before.

Despite the ferocity of his climax, Crowley is left feeling achingly incomplete. He swallows and cups himself, where there’s a belle-chose instead of a hard prick, already wet and aching. It isn’t the Effort he wants, the one that feels _right_ , right now, but he _needs_ it. Needs to be filled because he’s well and truly fucked anyway. Might as well make it official.

He lies back, one foot brushing the floor, and two fingers pressed in deep. Pulling them out and thrusting against slick, soft inner lips and inner walls. The sagging surface beneath him feels strangely like a cradle. He drags his middle finger roughly along the slit, thumb brushing the pointed hood. “I could have anyone,” he whispers aloud, his voice treacherously thin. He fucks himself on his fingers to their parting words. _I don’t need you._ The demon spreads his fingers, gasping and clenching reflexively around the stretch, as if to show off to someone who isn’t there. _See what you’re missing?_ He can’t see it from this angle, but he can imagine the obscene look of it. That butter soft, shiny red stretch of vulnerable flesh from his inner lips. _You say it’s mutual, that you don’t need this, but I bet you would. You do, you do, you do._ He can picture it, the trace of Aziraphale’s tongue, short blond curls tickling the inside of his thighs.

Crowley would give a _lot_ to be stuffed up the arse and quim with some kind of toy, but that would mean he’d have to free one of his currently occupied hands which isn’t an option. He works his hands roughly, as if he can scrub this want from the core of his existence if he’s harsh enough. Crowley’s spine arches up off the couch in a desperate curve. The second orgasm takes him by surprise. He turns his face into the upholstery to muffle his cry. It’s marginally more satisfying, but he still feels empty, even as he squeezes around three of his own fingers.

The sound of panting fills the study, and he tries to ignore that phantom scent of the angel that haunts him. He brushes his thumb against his clit through the hood and whimpers. Too sensitive to chase a third crest. By the time he withdraws his fingers and slides them into his mouth to clean off the slick he’s swapped back to a cock. Crowley exhales out a sigh as at least _one_ thing in the world is set back to rights. One piece of him falling back into place. The awful emptiness goes away, and though he’s still not _satisfied_ , it’s not as acute as before. Maybe because he actually banished the physical sensation of being open and _receptive._ He lays there long enough to catch his breath. With a snap of his fingers it’s like this never happened. Crowley drags a hand down his face.

The anger has burned out of him for now. A layer of charcoal coats the interior of his ribcage.

“A project,” Crowley repeats to himself. Not just something he can take credit for, but something absurd and complicated. Something where the myriad of incomprehensible parts from the outside blend into one incandescent, brilliant whole. He slowly arranges his limbs into a position that resembles standing.

There’s only one thing for it, if he wants to come up with an idea. Crowley pulls out his watch and nods. Perfect. The green hour is starting up. (Though it could be said that every hour is the green hour for how much absinthe is drunk in France.)

There’s a lovely little bar that he happens to know Manet and his friends like to frequent.

Crowley knows that the dangers of absinthe aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. A lot of overblown moral pearl-clutching and budding propaganda from the wine industry, and yet he doesn’t remember much as he stumbles his way up the rickety flight of stairs to Jean Eve’s flat through a fog of green. He was certain they’d talked about nudes and sex workers and… something.

He doesn’t even think to knock on the door, he just barges on in and makes a bee-line for the ragged, tattered sofa. He pulls a canvas out from under his armpit and he tosses it carelessly onto the crate that had earlier held the world’s least welcome breakfast.

“Got you this,” he says without explanation. Or memory of where he’d procured it from. “Stole it off Vidal,” seems likely enough, anyway. He throws an arm over the back of the couch, closing his eyes for a moment and letting the world spin.

He hears the sound of paint moving on canvas across the room, and then the sound of a brush dipped in paint thinner.

“Are you hungry?” There’s only two people on God’s green Earth better at ignoring emotional unpleasantness and pretending that nothing unseemly had ever happened between them.

“Nah,” Crowley says honestly. Feels like anything put into his stomach will end up pickled by wormwood. He’s made of stern stuff, but that’s a fate worse than Hell. Jean Eve sets aside the paint and goes over to the tiny counter in the postage sized kitchenette to unwrap the brioche and leftover cheese.

They pull out a knife to carve off a slice of bread and smear it with a soft, spreadable cheese and preserves. “What did you do today?”

“Drink,” Crowley says roughly, brutally honest. “And work.” _Tried and failed not to think about my…_ What even _is_ Aziraphale? Once upon a time the angel had asked if they might be friends. Before this week Crowley would have hedged a bet that they were the very best, but now? _My hereditary enemy? My not-soulmate?_

Jean Eve nibbles quietly. “We had similar aims today then.” Once the slice of bread is gone they grab two bottles from the counter. They take a swig of Vin Mariani for themselves and set a bottle of something far less drinkable down in front of Crowley. The demon darts out a hand and starts drinking a truly terrible red. Utterly wretched. It pairs perfectly with his foul mood.

Crowley wonders, for a moment, if he would apologize here for how he acted earlier if he were a human. If he were that person named Carabosse. As a demon, it takes him ages to get the nerve to say he’s sorry for anything. The painter will be long dead by the time he’s ready to. He settles for thinking it very loudly at them. He tries to drink with an air of contrition.

The furniture groans as Jean Eve perches by his shoulder on the back of the sofa, feet planted on the seat.

“You shouldn’t sleep out here again tonight,” Jean Eve says. “Though you’re the only person I know who the bedbugs and mice don’t dare bite.”

“They won’t if they know what’s good for them,” Crowley agrees. “If you’re angling to use me for my warmth I have bad news for you—” he forces the bottle to his mouth to forestall the joke-truth ‘I’m cold blooded’ from slipping free. “…You’ll be disappointed,” he settles on after pulling the glass back from his lips.

“It’s not that cold yet. Summer is young,” Jean Eve shrugs, as if this detail doesn’t matter. Crowley laughs.

“You’re the only other person I know who’s always half as cold as me.”

Slender, paint-covered fingers start combing through his hair. “True, I’ve never met anyone like you. You could freeze in the summer sunshine.”

There’s something extremely undemonic happening at his eyeline, clumping his eyelashes together. Jean Eve alternates gentle little tugs on random tufts of hair between long, full-fingered rakes. As if it’s nothing to touch him like this. As if their association has a foundation of casual touches.

“Yeah,” Crowley says around a tight throat. “Tha’s me. Turn blue in the middle of July, that’s me.”

“Blue?”

Crowley closes his eyes with a groan. He lets his head fall back, “Think of… being outside in January. No … Feb—you know what, it doesn’t matter. Just… winter. That’s the point here. Imagine being cold in the winter and then jumping into the ocean. Middle of December. Sometime before you stop feeling the cold entirely, you look down into the deep of it… and that’s blue.” Crowley shivers and he recalls a cool touch to his throat. The smell of a garden and a muddy river. His hand held by an angel.

“What color are his eyes?” The pleasant touches don’t stop, and he doesn’t get angry. Somehow. Maybe he’s finally drunk and spent enough that it doesn’t matter.

“Why d’you care? You change your mind on the whole soulmate rot?”

There’s the sound of cloth shifting as they shrug. “Merely curious.”

Crowley goes quiet for a long time, lets himself be petted like an overlarge cat. Just as he’s considering nodding off his jaw moves to speak. “They aren’t blue,” he settles on. It is easier to list the colors that Aziraphale’s eyes are not, which doesn’t get any closer to defining what they are. They defy description of every color that Crowley has ever learned.

“You should sleep,” Jean Eve pronounces as his eyes flutter open.

“I can sleep here,” he murmurs. “Make a good subject for you. Very still.”

“Yes, ‘Idiot in repose.’”

The demon snorts and pretends to be offended, “Surely I at least rank _fairy_ in repose?”

“We shall see,” Jean Eve smiles and rubs a knuckle down the nape of Crowley’s neck as he bends forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He knows he _should_ say thank you, but the words hang frozen in his mouth. Like stalactites. He can’t even say them as Carabosse. He settles for an indistinct noise in his throat.

He feels _old_. Every second of the past five thousand eight hundred sixty six years, plus all the days before rain, sits heavy on his shoulders. It’s tempting to shed that weight. Let it drop like an old skin, turn back into a snake and never put his legs back on again.

“I’ll be alright,” Crowley finally says aloud, looking at the floor.

“You will,” Jean Eve says with a smile in their voice. There’s one last, brief ruffle of his hair. Something almost parental to it.

Maybe going to sleep as Crowley and waking up as Carabosse will be change enough.

***

The days slowly pass by. Carabosse ‘poses for his portrait’ which Jean Eve refuses to let him see. They paint it only with the three colors Crowley got for them. He’s curious how it will turn out. In any event it has the gears turning in his head.

He comes and he goes. Some nights he stays at Rue Ciel where he can sleep in a real bed. Or on the ceiling, but when he feels the _need_ creeping up on him he finds his way back to the study, to the couch. There’s something too _fraught_ about the bed. There’s something heavy and painful he can sense, like the weight of his wings locked away in the firmament. Something that would break free and crush him by the throat if he dared try to rub one out in the comfort of his actual bedroom. He’s not as vulnerable in the study. It’s safe enough there, to torture himself.

When he isn’t wanking or drinking himself into oblivion he’s using his connections for his next project. What was an idle thought before is his all-consuming goal. Another three months passes in a blink, and Jean Eve’s portrait is finally finished. (It was a modest-sized canvas, all told, but Jean Eve has commissions to work on for their patron. Sometimes the art is performative in the way of dinner at the estate, but Jean Eve adheres to the golden rule of all artists—never turn down free food.)

Carabosse blinks. The thing that surprises him the most is how life-like it is. Without realizing it, Jean Eve has somehow captured his true likeness. The figure on the couch looks like a loose coil of black and red more than a man-shaped thing. The only difference is the red is on top. He’s surprised at how many colors can be produced with just those three. The aurelion in particular has worked some magic as it mixes with the black and red. It’s a mess, it’s confusing, it’s awful, it’s provocative.

Crowley loves it.

He gives himself a week, when Jean Eve is leaving for Madam Laurent’s for one of her famously boring salons.

Carabosse takes the painting— _Idiot in Repose—_ and heads to the _Académie._

He waits two weeks after Jean Eve’s return before he climbs back into the window.

“You’re welcome,” he says by way of greeting.

Jean Eve turns, paper in hand, dressed in a fine dressing gown—no doubt a gift from Mme Laurent—not startled, but mildly surprised to see him. “Carabosse! I thought perhaps you’d left home for England again.”

He waves a hand, “Too much to do here. But yes, _you’re welcome_. D’you not read your mail?”

“I try to avoid looking at the post as much as possible. I have no need to be reminded my creditors know where I can be found. I try not to think of such unpleasantness.”

“You,” Crowley pronounces with a flourish, “are going to be in this year’s _Salon de Paris.”_ He holds his arm up with a triumphant smile.

The slow blink that greets him reminds him far too much of the sort of looks he gets down in Hell. “Pardon?”

“Fuck’s sake could you be a _little_ excited? We’re going to shake things up!”

“‘We’?” Jean Eve’s tone is arch, and Crowley is taken aback.

“Yeah, of course _we_. Who d’you think got you in there in the first place.”

“That would take a miracle,” the human’s brows furrow deeply. They look at Crowley as if puzzled, trying to fit him into some sort of box. He adjusts his glasses and shuffles in place.

“Too bloody right. It wasn’t easy! D’you know how long I had to listen to Baudelaire bang on about _modernité?_ Not to mention—actually yes, let’s best not mention that part of it, eh? Point is, my _point_ is! _You_ are about to be a household name, my dear.”

“I _told_ you the _Salon_ isn’t the voice of God from on high!” Jean Eve’s voice is cold, and he’s taken aback by the reaction _._

“Don’t you _dare_ be _angry_ about this! You should be fucking _grateful!”_

“No!” Their dark eyes flash and their lips press together in a tight line before they bite out, “I’m-I _am_ … I _did_ want… I didn’t want… I _do_ want to be recognized but not like… Argh!” They grip their hair, and for a moment Crowley thinks they might try to tear themselves in two.

“What’s the bloody problem?”

“I didn’t _care_ about the _Salon._ I _don’t_ care… as long as _someone_ —but I want…” Jean Eve pinches their brow. “ _You_ got into that _Salon._ Not me. This is something _you_ wanted. Anyone could have painted that fucking painting—”

“ _Only_ you could have painted it!”

“ _You could have gotten anyone into the Salon!”_

 _“How do you think anyone gets into those bloody Salons?!_ You think the _Académie_ plays _fair?_ That they judge things by their worth or merit? No! It’s all about who you know and exploiting your connections and moving to the top. You _know_ that. You’re too _smart_ not to know that!” _Now who’s the idiot?_ He wants to shake this stupid, ungrateful mortal. _I fucking gave you that one for free! D’you know what I could have done to you? To anyone else? The things I could have extorted from you?_

"Do you believe in angels, Monsieur Lunettes de Soleil?" Jean Eve reins in something of their anger as they snap at him. Crowley sways on his feet, utterly thrown by the change in subject.

"I wish I couldn't."

"What about devils then?" Jean Eve presses.

"Is there a point to your line of questioning?" He tries not to panic. _They don’t know, they can’t know._

“I met one, while you were gone.”

His entire face falls. His heart follows after before it starts beating again. “When? How?”

“Oh some dark Thursday night. On my way home from the cabaret on Boulevard de Clichy. I thought he was a common thug, but no…” the human trails off, considering. As if thoughtfully recounting a dream.

“This… demon… what did he… What did he look like? What was his name?”

“Disagreeable looking fellow. Ugly mouth. Dark eyes. Light hair. Smelled like a cat left to die in the gutter. Crooked neck.” Jean Eve brushes their hands over their arms. “Called himself Hastur.”

Crowley can’t stop the noise that tries to crawl out of his throat. _No. No, no, no no! Was he watching this whole time? How long was he spying on me?_

“What did he offer you?” It’s surreal. Like gathering a daily report from the wrong mouth. _Hail Satan, let us recount the deeds of the day._

“He offered to introduce me to my soulmate.” Jean Eve shrugs. As if this is casual, an everyday thing. And, on some level, it is. It’s an easy enough temptation. Dangle the opportunity, the knowledge of a potential soulmate in front of a human and they’ll do the most extraordinary things. Even give away their souls.

His stomach goes into a freefall. He gets it now. _You aren’t that painter anymore, is that it?_

“And?” His throat is tight. It feels like absinthe weaving through his muscles, bitter wormwood. “Who is it?” _You’ve already met mine. Fuck, if I had a soul left to sell I think I’d give it up just to be you._

“Oh I don’t know. I told him I wasn’t interested. In fact, I told him a much better offer would be to ensure that we never meet.” The human avoids his gaze and glances down at the paper, as though fascinated.

He goes cold, a vice grip around his stomach, and an ocean of regret roiling in his belly. _Why did I do this to you? My fault for bringing you to his attention._ Crowley only hoped that Hastur was lying about a possible soulmate, or else someone is meeting a very ugly, painful end right now.

Crowley drags his hands down his face and tries not to howl the words out of his one functioning lung, “Why didn’t you pray for it instead!?”

“If God gave guarantees, perhaps I wouldn’t need to look elsewhere.” Anger sizzles under his skin, despite the fact that he knows prayers go unanswered.

“Why’d you throw it away?” Crowley asks through a tight jaw. _Do you know what I’d give to stand where you are? You’re so lucky and you don’t even know it!_

“My work,” Jean Eve shakes their head. “It’s _everything._ I’m nothing without it.”

“This fucking speech again,” Crowley rolls his eyes bitterly. “You _aren’t_ your work! You’re not! Take it from someone who _knows.”_

Jean Eve sizes him up, and then tilts their head. “You know him.”

Again the change in subject catches him like an anvil to the face. _“What?_ Who?” But the panic in his voice is undeniable now.

“Hastur,” Jean Eve lifts a hand to their chin thoughtfully. “He’s your Monsieur Grenouille, isn’t he?”

Crowley works his jaw, too late to find any words for a proper denial. His silence says it all.

“He’s your—”

 **_“Don’t,”_ ** Crowley growls and, for once, it terrifies the human like it should. He sees it, smells it on the air. _Please don’t._

They draw in a breath, but Crowley cuts them off. “I’m leaving.” _I’m going to fix this._ His teeth click together. He just barely keeps them from turning into fangs. If he’s lucky Jean Eve will still think that he’s human. He’s never been more thankful that his facial hair hides the brand at his temple.

***

“Hastur!” Crowley throws the doors of the gambling den open. The room is dark and full of smoke, darker still through his glasses, but he can just make out Hastur and Ligur sitting at a circular table in the back corner of the room, cards and bits of bone on the table before them. Two humans and an imp failing very badly at being man-shaped sit at the table with them. In the corner of the room a small crush of a dozen or so mortals crowd around a roulette wheel. As he gets closer Crowley can see the deck is comprised of at least five different types of playing cards.

“Ah, hello Crawley. Was wondering when I’d be seeing you.” Hastur flashes an ugly grin with his bullfrog mouth, and Crowley wonders why it took a human of all things to point out the duke’s crooked neck.

He doesn’t even rise to the bait of the incorrect use of his name. Ligur smiles at him quietly, the lizard on his head has a cigar wrapped in the coil of its tail which he brings to his mouth. The skin of it is a shocking blue, with pale circles like rising moons down its sides. When he sucks in Crowley can see the red and black flames of hellfire wrapped inside the paper.

“Fancy joining us in a game, slickstain?”

Crowley tightens his jaw, “No. Hastur— _Archduke_ Hastur,” he corrects himself a half beat too late. “You and I have something to discuss.” 

Hastur glances askance at Ligur, then nods cautiously.

" _Alone,"_ he hisses through his teeth. Ligur snarls and rises to his feet.

"No, no," Hastur says sharply. "It's all right. I'll see what it is that Mr. Slick-for-brains here wants. Make sure our friends don't get any ideas about running."

Ligur smiles wickedly before he catches himself and scowls again. "Fine, but save me a piece if you're going to hurt him."

"Don't worry," Hastur's teeth shine like salamander eggs. "I'll save you an arm."

 _Charming._ Crowley keeps his mouth pressed shut until Ligur and the other table members leave.

He drops himself into one of the seats left vacant by one of the humans, kicks up his feet onto Ligur’s empty chair. “What’re you playing at Hastur? Horning in on my mark?” He picks up the cards in front of him, sniffing mildly as he takes in their contents. The Papess sits on her throne in the center, though she looks a bit more menacing than other depictions he’s seen. The other cards are an assortment of suits from across the continent. Bells and swords that look like acorns. Coins and cups. Clovers and diamonds, even a jolly joker—stretched out on a rack and crying out in pain.

A bad hand indeed.

“What’s the matter Crawley? Upset that someone stole away your prize? I had that human shaking my hand in twenty minutes. How long have you been faffing about?” Hastur looks so smug Crowley is _certain_ he knows what he looked like as an angel. The urge to punch him is just as strong as it is with any Power or Dominion he’s ever had the misfortune to meet. ”That’s what you get for neglecting to hone in on your craftsmanship. See what you miss out on when you get side-tracked rerouting trains or whatever fool thing strikes your fancy?”

“What do you want?” He sets the cards face down back on the table. “Surely we can come to some sort of agreement. Is it souls? I can get you souls. Weapons? Magic? …Favors?” He clutches a hand on the back of his chair, and drums the table with the other.

“How many souls are we talking about?”

“I dunno,” Crowley says, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Five to one? You fucked up my plans. ‘S delicate. I was working on… on giving them what they wanted. They just didn’t know they wanted it yet.” He starts trading cards between hands indiscriminately on his side of the table, picking them up by the edges and dropping them without glancing at the bottom.

“Just admit it, Mr. Of Eden. You couldn’t _tempt_ that mortal. You had no idea what it wanted.”

Crowley bites the inside of his cheek. “If I had been _allowed_ to play out my gambit…”

“Twenty to one. And a favor.”

Crowley narrows his eyes behind his glasses, lowering his voice. “Twenty to one and I don’t spill the beans to Ligur about your little eye condition.”

Hastur blinks his scab-colored eyes slowly. “You’re bluffing.”

Crowley shrugs. “Counts as a favor in my book. You want to take that chance?”

“I could expose you just as easily,” Hastur growls quietly.

 _Humans have a saying, there’s only one way for three to keep a secret._ “You seen these matches humans have invented? Damn clever things.” He slips a box of them from his coat pocket and shuffles his fingertips idly through the box. “Just a bit of friction and boom. Got yourself a fire. You can burn down a whole building with just one of these. A city block if it spreads. All that, from _this._ ” He holds up a white-tipped matchstick.

“What’s your point?” the Archduke crosses his arms.

“I’m saying I’m the match right now. Fifty to one and I won’t burn this whole place down with us inside it, and I’ll continue to keep my mouth shut for the rest of eternity about what you may or may not see.” Crowley stretches out his left hand, ready to make a deal.

“A hundred,” Hastur demands, slowly uncrossing his arms and reaching over the table.

“Yes, yes, alright _fine_. Five hundred, if you like, can we get on?” Crowley flexes the muscles at his knee to keep his leg from bouncing.

Hastur’s chin suddenly cocks to one side, making his neck look broken. A rare flicker of understanding dawns over his face. His hand draws back. “You _like_ that human, don’t you?”

Crowley’s eyes widen behind his glasses. He forces the rest of his face to remain still. “Don’t be ridiculous. They’re just one human. A pawn, a building block in a greater plan—”

Hastur leans over on his palms, as if ready to leap across the mess of bones and cards, “Think I’ll hang on to this one actually. Feel free to burn away, if you feel like setting a match to the rest of your miserable existence, _Crawley._ ”

Slowly, Crowley pulls back his hand. He forces his mouth to stay still, squeezes his teeth down on the throat of every word desperate to fly off his tongue. He snaps the match under his thumb and pockets it away.

“There’s a good boy,” Hastur smirks across at him. He leans back in his chair, as if he’s sitting on his throne in Hell. He smiles loftily, “If you’re lucky maybe I’ll let you visit that human after they die, hm? For a few favors, of course…”

Crowley swallows and nods mutely, completely rumbled. “Right. Sure. Course.” He should have known better. If there’s one thing he can’t criticize Hastur for, it’s sniffing out the places to make someone hurt. Probably one of his strongest talents as a demon.

“You can go now, Mr. Of Eden.”

“Getting ready to leave anyway,” he mumbles in half-hearted defiance, pushing himself onto his feet.

He leaves the box of matches behind.

Ligur checks him in the shoulder outside the door, but Crowley doesn’t say a word as he stumbles past.

The back of his tongue tastes like phosphate. He winds his way through the city in a daze. _This never would have happened to you if you weren’t hanging around with the wrong crowd._ Under his fingertips, he feels the splinters from the broken matchstick in his pocket. _This. This is why you should have given me the holy water, angel!_ He can’t even be angry. Somehow it’s all burned away. He pinches his brow and lets out a heavy sigh.

Rue Ciel appears before him. His abode is pitch dark inside. He leaves his boots and coat by the door. He drapes his waistcoat over the bannister as he climbs the stairs. The cravat falls from his fingertips as he approaches his study. He grabs a bottle of Scotch from one of his shelves and drains it in one go.

He lays himself down onto the couch, curling up on one side. His wings manifest behind him, gentle as a shadow, and he draws them in around himself for lack of a blanket.

 _Stupid really. My own fault for getting attached to a human._ For forgetting what he is. Crowley lets his eyelids close softly behind his glasses. He feels tired enough to sleep for a whole century. He pulls in a deep breath, and wedges himself tighter against the seam between the back of the sofa and the seat.

It's almost like being held.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ty again to Noodlefrog for being the BEST cheerleader as well as those in the SOSH and GO-Events server. This one was a beast to get through. Pray for me that the next chapter will be shorter. ~~We're headed to 1941, so good luck, me!~~
> 
> Also have some fun, rejected tags that I meant to put up earlier but didn't have time due to having to leave for work:
> 
> Attempted scenting  
> Non penetrative couch sex  
> Emotional support couch  
> Erotic Tunneling
> 
> Choice discord comments from my DMs with Noodlefrog and evidence of why they are the best cheerleader/enabler:
> 
>  **Noodle:**  
>  He's doing his best  
> Sometimes u just have to fuck a couch and be sad  
>  **Lyrium:**  
>  Crowley: How dare you I am not FUCKING THE COUCH. :hiss:  
>  **Noodle:**  
>  The couch is way more of an active participant in this than a regular piece of furniture would be
> 
> &  
>  **Noodle:**  
>  In this non penetrative couch sex I'm pretty sure the couch is the top


	5. Modus tollens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Of course, if Crowley has his way he'll be less than a bloodstain. No trace left at all._ Just a painful, enduring absence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains more sad wanking, wound/burn care, as well as emotionally significant furniture.

**[London 1941]**

Aziraphale wonders, with a wild hope in his throat, can someone develop color vision later in life? If you spend enough time with a person who loves you, and whom you love, is that not enough to determine compatibility? His heart beats behind his thyroid.

He looks for something, _anything_ in this moment where he swears he can _hear_ a symphony of strings, his heart full and heavy all at once. Some recognition. Some flicker of muscle on Crowley’s face that says something novel and unprecedented is happening. That he’s suddenly receiving visual input altogether new.

“Lift home?”

Aziraphale’s heart falls out of his throat and into the pit of his stomach as there’s nothing.

_I’m fucked._

He wants to cry. He _hates_ that he even thought such a vulgar word. (Though this would not be the first time Crowley has inspired him to think of vulgar matters.)

Crowley has given him many things over the years, and all of it feels like it was leading to this. Cakes and crepes. Chocolate, dark and bitter when he opened his bookshop to celebrate the sudden departure of his superiors. All sorts of liquor and even flowers, on occasion. So many tomes and scrolls bound in leather, yet never like this. Not like _this_. Not where he knew Aziraphale better than he knows himself.

Leather comes in many colors. Aziraphale has been around long enough to see the humble beginnings of tannery to the complicated, modernized process it is now. He doesn’t know how humans came up with it. The treatment of skin in layers until the collagen is stretched and given the desired pliability and softness. Strength through preservation. Chromium is the tanning agent of choice for most things now. It’s more efficient, has wider uses, but natural tannins from tree bark are still used for items such as this. Luggage and furniture. The leather is stiffer than one might ask of a bomber jacket. 

Crowley would look good in one of those. Ready to cause mischief and shielded from the cold, if not the misery of this whole awful affair.

“Oi. You coming?”

Aziraphale nods, the bag clutched to his chest like it contains the holy grail or the cure to polio.

It contains something far more precious.

Each of these books holds portents of the future. These books are a path forward. A map for how he and Crowley might find their way out together on the other side of Armageddon. Despite the fact that it had been decades since they last spoke.

He stumbles over the rubble, following Crowley. Aziraphale almost runs into a sleek, black car in the dark. Nearly invisible. The demon pulls the passenger side door open. Aziraphale gasps quietly.

“Oh, Crowley, is this yours?”

It’s a sleek, lovely thing. The interior isn’t black, as he suspected it might be. Seats the same color as toffee and he can just make out the smell of leather above the rubble and ruin choking the air.

“Yeah. ‘S a Bentley. Traded up from a ‘26 about eight years back. Thinking it might be time to do it again. They’ve got new ones that go from 0 to 60 in under 16 seconds…” Crowley saunters around the front of the car, still chattering away. He sounds so far away through the glass.

Then suddenly Crowley is there, in the driver’s seat. An unfamiliar presence at his right, where he’s never been before. It makes Aziraphale feel more off balance than ever. It’s like having a missing weight of an absent satchel returned to him on the wrong hip.

“That’s a shame,” he finds himself saying during a moment Crowley pauses for breath, hand curled around the leather handle of the book bag. “It’s such a lovely car, and it’s practically like new.”

The demon stops speaking, as if all the wind has been taken out of his sails. Aziraphale can just catch the movement of his jaw as he flexes it around a sound in his throat.

“....Well, yeah, might hang onto it for a bit still. Just, y’know. Fashion. Keeping up appearances.”

Aziraphale nods somberly.

Silence fills the cab as they sit there, no move made to start the ignition.

_I missed you_ , Aziraphale thinks around a burning in his throat. “Well,” he says even softer.

“Well,” Crowley echoes, his hands coming to rest gingerly on the wheel. There’s another painful silence. It stretches and contorts like an aerialist under duress. “...Same address?” the demon asks the question softly.

Aziraphale nods. Another little cut to his too full heart. _You’d know if you’d stopped by._ “Yes, you remember the way? I can give you directions.”

“Nah,” Crowley says easily, finally starting the car. “I know where it is. I can find my way, even with the city all…” he gestures vaguely to the rubble around them.

“Oh.” Aziraphale isn’t sure what to make of the fact that Crowley remembers where he lives. Can find his way there in the dark with the roads leading back there scattered in ruins. _Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you come find me, if you knew? I tried to find you._

The car slowly pulls away, wheels rumbling as they climb over brick and rubble like tank treads.

The silence is assertive. Like a third party in the car, trying to play navigator from the backseat.

Aziraphale fidgets, runs his thumb along the leather handle. _I missed you._ _Like a limb, as the humans say. Having you back feels like pulling my wings out of the ether._

“I—” he hesitates and bites his lip. He’s _not_ sorry. Not really. Or at least not for what he refused to do. How he said it, perhaps. For the distance that it created between them, absolutely. “I’m…” _happy to see you._ Surprised, yes. Devastated, yes, but also glad. Overwhelmed and overjoyed in the best possible way.

“Don’t say thank you,” the admonishment hisses out from between tight teeth.

“I wasn’t going to,” Aziraphale says, still dazed. Still dazzled. _You’re here._

Crowley scoffs loudly, “Well there’s a fine how-d’you-do. So much for gratitude.” It would come across as more put upon if he weren’t smirking openly.

“Oh, but I am… Though I am… grateful. These books are…” _priceless, precious, irreplaceable now that they’re a gift from you,_ “...important. To me.”

“Course they are,” Crowley snorts. “That’s why you used them as bargaining chips in your little game of cloaks and daggers.”

It should hurt, but Aziraphale can see the barest hint of a smile at the corner of Crowley’s mouth. A hint of a crinkle at the edges of his eyes.

Something in his chest uncoils, finally lets go and relaxes. “I was just…” his throat locks up on him. _Surprised to see you again. Do you know how much you were missed?_

“It’s all right, angel,” Crowley says the words softly, tentatively. So quiet they’re almost lost to the rumble of the tires beneath their feet. It occurs to Aziraphale that at the speed they’re driving they could probably walk faster back to the bookshop, but he can’t bring himself to mind. “You don’t have to say anything.”

_Oh._ “All right,” he breathes back.

There’s something magical about the inside of the Bentley. It’s quiet and intimate. Like they might be the only two creatures in all of God’s creation.

“It’s… been a long time,” Crowley finally offers after several minutes of deliberation.

“ _Yes,_ ” Aziraphale agrees in relief. “That was—that’s it exactly!”

Crowley’s smile is something weak and fragile, the exposure of his teeth somehow vulnerable. “Well,” he says again, like the start of a promise, and the purr of the motor increases slightly as the wheels climb over another pile of bricks and twisted steel.

Aziraphale clutches the bag in his lap as the rest of the sentence never comes.

They ride in silence the rest of the way, eventually clearing the destruction and pulling onto streets that have been cleared—in some cases hastily repaired. There’s an open space just in front of the bookshop that Crowley pulls the car into. Like it's always been there for him. Crowley cuts the engine and Aziraphale stares at the bag in his lap. In his peripheral vision he can see the demon’s hands flutter along the steering wheel.

The rest of the city is dark, still in blackout. Aziraphale strains his hearing, and there’s the tell-tale sound of another round of bombs falling in the distance. He wishes, not for the first time, that his wingspan were larger. If he were an Archangel or a seraph, he could do more, could cover the whole city. He stretches them as far as they’ll go, and prays that it will be enough to help some of the city’s residents stay safe, even if their homes are destroyed. He feels the echo of an ache, a pounding at his shoulder blades that travels down his spine like a message on a telegraph wire. Of course, Aziraphale has never had a bomb dropped directly on his head before.

“You look tired, angel.” Even in the dark he can feel Crowley eye him up and down.

“I’m alright,” he murmurs quietly. There’s another lull and Aziraphale’s thumb flicks along the handle, “Come inside? At least until the raid is over.” _Until our lives are over. Don’t leave again._

“Yeah,” Crowley says after a moment exhaling deeply. “Yeah, alright.” He pulls at the handle and presses the slight weight of his form against the driver’s side door. At that moment some of the smoke and clouds part enough to let pale moonlight shine through. Aziraphale catches the sight of Crowley hunched over before he straightens up with a wobble.

“Oh, Crowley—” Aziraphale starts shimmying his way across the gap between the passenger seat and the driver’s side of the car, “—your feet!”

There’s a tsking sound as Crowley turns and snarls down at him. “I would have come around to get the door! What _about_ my feet?”

Aziraphale slides the rest of the way over and out of the car, still clutching the bag. “They must be sore! Come inside at once!”

Crowley shoves his hands into his pockets, arms held stiffly at his sides, yet his neck isn’t bent and hunched as it usually is. Isn’t coiled and ready to strike. He awkwardly shuts the driver side door with a jut of his hips. _Oh you must be in pain, dear friend._

“‘M fine, no need to make a fuss,” but his ginger steps belie his words.

“Of course,” Aziraphale fusses.

He fumbles at the door with his keys. It’s much harder to do this one-handed, but he can’t bring himself to set down the books, legitimately terrified he’ll forget them somewhere again.

He finally gets his key in order, and the door yields with a sturdy, familiar click. Aziraphale fights the urge to scoop his dear, beloved friend in his arms. He steps in and holds the door open for Crowley. The demon saunters in, slower than ever, as if shuffling through tar.

Aziraphale knows it isn’t just his feet that have him so nervous to step in here. “Please—come sit on the couch,” he lets the hand holding the books hover at the small of Crowley’s back. “You can stretch your legs there, put up your feet.”

He watches as Crowley’s head turns this way and that. “You’ve redecorated.” The demon lets himself be guided towards the back room.

“Just a little,” Aziraphale admits. “Mostly just moved a few shelves around, added some new ones. Moved my desk. Everything else is largely the same. Well, I did also reshelve the books, oh, gracious I daresay It’s been seventeen times at least!”

“What? No more Chaucer frolicking among William Blake?” Crowley’s mouth twists into a wry smile, “Say it isn’t so!”

_In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes?_ “I think you’ll find it’s much the same.” _On what wings dare he aspire?_ He finally sets the bag down on a table as they step into the small room carved into the depths of his book collection.

Crowley lets out a short laugh. “I can see that,” he nods over at the couch. A venerable leather Chesterfield. “You still have that old thing?” his face is scrunched up, incredulous. More visible too as Crowley pulls his hat off his head, revealing that short tickety boo hair of his.

Aziraphale twists the ring at his pinky and chuckles nervously. “You know me. Slow to change.” It’s still in pristine condition. He’s kept it clean with saddle soaps and applied leather cream religiously at least once a year.

“Shocked that it isn’t covered in a mountain of books by now,” Crowley shakes his head and walks over to it, flopping down on it as if he were its true owner, shoes briefly resting on the curve of the armrest.

_It’s yours. I haven’t sat in it since you left. I kept that space open for you. In case you decided to drop by, slot back into my life. Pick up just before where we left off and pretend like nothing had happened._

“Oh, let me get your shoes,” he rushes over and grabs a lumpy throw pillow from his other chair so the soles of his shoes don’t dirty the leather. He slides it under Crowley’s feet and he reaches for the other’s laces. _What the hand, dare seize the fire?_

“Ngh-c’mon Aziraphale! I meant it when I said don’t fuss!”

“Technically that’s not what you said. You just said there was no _need_ to make a fuss.”

“‘S the same thing!”

Aziraphale gently pulls off Crowley's shoe, setting it carefully on the floor. The other one joins it soon after.

It's strange, seeing the couch occupied after spending so long as a shrine to absence. He considers the socks, pieces of them clearly stuck to Crowley's feet. “I think I’m going to have to cut these off,” Aziraphale lightly rests his fingertips atop the smallest toe on Crowley’s right foot, testing. He doesn’t see so much as a flicker of pain from the demon.

Crowley sighs. “Give me a few and I’ll get rid of them. ‘S not like they’re real.” He settles back against the couch, legs sliding forward so that his feet hang just over the rounded arm.

“Right,” Aziraphale swallows, suddenly struck by the rather odd notion that Crowley is lying nude before him if none of his clothes truly exist. The demon exhales, and there’s something like a wisp of fog sublimating off his feet, until his skin is bare and exposed to the air.

Aziraphale sucks in a sharp breath, his heart clenching in sympathy. “Oh, _Crowley.”_

“‘S fine,” Crowley crosses his arms across his belly. “Doesn’t even smart,” but his face is drawn tight, and he turns to press a cheek against the cool leather.

The bottom of Crowley’s feet are scorched, patches of skin turned black and brown. The tops of them have turned an angry red. “Oh, let me go… Let me get my supplies.”

“Sure, whatever,” Crowley sniffs, carefully averting his gaze. “Your house, your show.”

Aziraphale briskly heads to the space that serves as his kitchenette. He has a medical bag that’s served him well since the previous war. He slings it over his shoulder. The supplies inside are real, it’s easier to replenish from something whole and concrete, far less taxing on his allotted power budget to do it this way. He also gets a large basin, and twists his tap, praying that the water lines are working. There’s a frightful moment of nothing but creaky, squeaky groaning from the pipes in the wall, but finally there’s a splutter of water against ceramic, the pressure weakening to almost nothing. Aziraphale quickly twists the tap off as soon as the basin is full.

The surface of the water swirls, but not a drop is spilled as he makes his way back. He carefully kneels down in front of the couch and sets the large bowl down, shrugging the strap of his bag off after. “I think it’ll be easier if you sit up.”

Crowley twists elegantly, feet still elevated at the end of the sofa as he looks down at Aziraphale. _And what shoulder, & what art, could twist the sinews of thy heart? _

“You can’t mean to sit on the floor while you do this?”

“I’ve sat in worse places to administer healing,” Aziraphale points out, somewhat testy. _Stop trying to avoid this and let me help you!_ “Up,” he says firmly.

There’s a noise of token grumbling, but Crowley spools himself upright in a fascinating duel against gravity, setting his hat to one side. “Happy?”

“Very,” Aziraphale says softly, staring hard at Crowley’s feet. He can hear the demon swallow in the silence that follows. Aziraphale reaches into his bag and produces a dark brown bottle. “Oh… drat, I’ll need another basin. I don’t suppose you could be a dear and…?”

Crowley gives another put upon sigh, but he snaps, and there’s an empty steel basin spinning along its edge before it slows and settles in place with a final clatter. Like a coin after Aziraphale has muffed one of his magic tricks.

“Cheek!” he tuts, and pulls the empty basin over. He sets the bottle inside, and he gets out a length of gauze and a bar of soap the color of packing tape, wetting it in the water. He gently cups Crowley by the ankle, just aways below the spare curve of his calf. _And when thy heart began to beat, what dread hand? & what dread feet? _ He carefully starts dabbing at Crowley’s burns. There’s the barest tightening around his eyes, just outside the rim of his glasses, but nothing more. “Reckless,” Aziraphale admonishes, looking down at Crowley’s pale, bony ankles. They seem especially fragile with the indirect burns crawling up them.

Crowley snorts, “I don’t think you have room to be calling anyone _reckless_ , angel. Playing at spies.”

“Well I—I never!” He blusters a bit more, but Crowley is right—as he so often is. Aziraphale uses the most delicate touch as he cleans the soles of Crowley’s feet, dabbing them clean again with water, letting them float in the basin after. He takes Crowley’s right foot and considers it carefully, running his fingers just along the back of the heel.

The serpent tilts his head in a suspicious angle. “What’re you doing down there?”

“One moment please,” Aziraphale rests the heel on his knee, and he reaches over and opens the bottle. A sharp, chemical smell fills the air.

“I take it that’s not whiskey.”

“It is not,” Aziraphale confirms, and he gently moves Crowley’s foot so that his ankle rests hooked on the lip of the steel basin. “Flex your foot, please, I shall need to pour this over you.”

_“Aziraphale_ ,” Crowley hisses through his teeth, his shoulders curling up next to his ears. “Can’t you just…?”

“I don’t need to use a miracle to heal you,” he confesses, “but your wound must be clean.” He flicks his eyes upwards in apology. “I need to… conserve what power I can.” Aziraphale sets his mouth in a grim line, and Crowley’s chin falls to his chest; his hair is so short now nothing seems to dangle.

“Alright.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale says, his voice cracking. There is so much _need_ , and only so much he _can_ do. Nevermind what he is _allowed_ to do. It’s paralyzing, sometimes. There are so many humans in so many corners of the world crying out in pain and suffering, sending up prayers. (Or thoughts close enough like them.) He can’t even hear them all.

Aziraphale learned long ago that the human machine of war is something no angel can stop. Not without a show of power not seen since Old Testament days, at least. And the cost of _making_ humans stop is not something he’s willing to do, even if he could. It’s all about choices, after all. And punishing them is simply a non-starter. _There’s no need to bring the heavenly wrath of Sodom and Gomorrah to them anymore. They do that themselves._

They do it to themselves. Crowley had said that once, eons ago during the Spanish Inquisition.

He tips the bottle over Crowley’s toes and the demon draws in a hissing breath. Dark liquid pours out, leaving behind a golden film atop his skin. Aziraphale takes another length of gauze and holds it at the end of the bottle, sloshing it up so that it soaks through, and uses it to dab what surfaces were missed between those toes and along the sole of his foot.

He repeats the process again with the other foot, and Crowley’s lips press together in a firm, pale line. Aziraphale moves them back to the water again and rinses them clean. “Alright,” Aziraphale draws in a steadying breath, moves Crowley’s left foot like he’s carrying something made of glass and rests his heel rests on his thigh. “I’m going to have to touch the burns now. I’ll be as gentle as possible.”

“Just do it,” Crowley rolls his eyes, as if terribly bored by the proceedings. Aziraphale nods, and lets his fingers rest on the top of Crowley’s foot while his thumbs come to rest on the arch of the foot.

Aziraphale swallows. His eyes blur as he traces his gaze over the brown and black crusted skin. It’s like No Man’s land. A minefield ruined by relentless shelling. It’ll be taken care of soon enough. He opens up that wellspring of power, to that innate stuff that makes him an angel, and his wings ache and shudder on another plane, sending another signal of pain down his spinal column. Little lights of white-tinged blue glow beneath his fingertips, light up the raised surfaces beneath, and Crowley’s leg twitches. “Hold still,” Aziraphale rumbles, slowly trailing his thumb upwards. The toes twitch and flex, but Aziraphale can already see signs that it’s working. A strangled noise sticks in the demon’s throat and he wrenches his foot out of Aziraphale’s grasp.

He blinks stupidly at his suddenly empty hands, and lets the power fade. Aziraphale slowly tips his head up at Crowley who looks, for all the world, like a pile of coils, legs drawn up around and underneath himself in impossible, pointed angles.

Aziraphale opens his mouth, weary and confused, but there’s another, quiet sound at the back of Crowley’s throat, and he _really_ takes in the other’s appearance. Crowley’s ribcage is expanding and collapsing like he’s been run ragged, his sunglasses knocked askew and his eyes dark, pupils blown as wide as almonds. His heart clenches again.

“Oh, did I hurt you?” He’s never tried to heal wounds on Crowley that were holy. Perhaps it wasn’t working after all. Was he making it worse?

Crowley shakes his head hurriedly. “No! No… ‘s just… it’s too much,” his voice is tight. He swallows thickly and shifts his jaw from side to side. He lets out a shaky breath, “Besides… I can see how tired you are, angel.” Crowley’s face slackens into something resembling gentle, “Just… do it the human way. I’ll get better anyway. Regenerate some new skin… shed this stuff. ‘S fine.”

_Do you know that? Do you make a habit of walking on consecrated ground?_ Still, Crowley refuses to lower his scorched feet, Aziraphale doesn’t have it in him to fight any longer. “Alright. We’ll do it the human way.”

Slowly, carefully, Crowley lowers his toes until they’re resting daintily along the water’s surface.

“I’ll be gentle,” Aziraphale promises. “I don’t have any tannic acid… Oh but I can make some tea? There’s tannins in tea!”

“Tannins?” Crowley blinks, and Aziraphale feels his throat dry up at the sight of that huge pupil.

“Yes,” he says faintly. “It’s… It’s supposed to help with… preventing fluids from building up, and preventing the build up of toxins.”

Crowley wrinkles his nose, and he leans over, the very tips of his fingers catching at the brim of his hat. It glides across the leather and those captivating, slender fingers pull it into his lap. “No, I see how it is. You’re finally getting rid of me. Gonna turn me into a belt.”

“Well, you’re hardly big enough to make a suitcase out of.” Aziraphale chuckles. He pulls out a length of bandages and starts treating them with the iodine solution. It only takes the slightest nudge to turn it into iodoform. Barely even counts as a miracle.

“That’s alligators anyway. Look at you, playing chemist.” Crowley’s voice is still oddly tight, and Aziraphale feels a familiar swoop in his belly. _Oh really? Now?_ “‘S downright adorable.”

His cheeks burn, hot as the crater of a fresh bombsite. Even though he knows Crowley is only making fun of him.

“I am an angel of the Lord,” Aziraphale says firmly, “and I am one of the oldest beings on this planet. Adorable is the last thing I am. And _you,_ you wily thing,” he grabs Crowley by the ankle carefully, but firmly, “are trying to distract me.”

“That obvious am I?” Crowley chuckles nervously, fingers fidgeting along the brim of his fedora.

“I’m afraid so. Deep breath,” he wraps the first bandage around the arch of Crowley’s foot. He can see the path his thumb traced—still red and blistered, but far better than the skin around it. Like a primrose path dug in a garden bed. _Why?_ But there must have been _something_ that he couldn’t detect. Something that hurt the stuff underneath his human skin. It’s the only thing that Aziraphale can think of that makes sense.

Crowley does as instructed, inflates his lungs and holds them full. He shifts in place, Aziraphale can feel the muscles tighten under his palm. “Shh,” he hushes softly. His thumb brushes along his trouser leg for just a moment, and Aziraphale’s skin goes hot again. _It isn’t there. Not really._ All at once it’s as if he’s holding a naked, slender leg. Slowly he drags his eyes up Crowley’s shins, past his knees.

For a moment, he sits spellbound, perfectly able to see Crowley in all his glorious nudity. Beautiful as the day he was created. Unbearably so. Heat pools to the front of his hips, frizzles down his belly. He realizes he’s been caught staring as he catches his own reflection in Crowley’s glasses.

_It's perfectly natural,_ Aziraphale thinks desperately, as he has countless times before. _It's just a physiological reaction. Nothing to do with how attracted you feel to him or the ache in your chest._

Crowley awkwardly takes the hat and dips his face behind the brim. “Wot? Something on my face?” There’s the barest peek of a blush around those cheekbones.

“N-no!” Aziraphale looks down and resumes bandaging Crowley’s feet. “Nothing.” He snaps his fingers, but nothing happens. He stares at his hand as though betrayed, despite his mind being pulled into too many directions at once. That ache in his shoulder blades reasserts itself for a moment.

“What d’you need, angel?”

“A pot of tea, I have the perfect blend. It’s in the larder, a green tin—oh, er, um. I mean,” Aziraphale turns his head to one side, staring very deliberately at the bookshelves. His heart spins uselessly, high at the back of his throat, like clay thrown on a potter’s wheel. A worse thought occurs to him. What if there was no reaction to be found earlier because Crowley can see in color now?

_It’s been eighty years. Things change. Most of all Crowley._ He should be _happy_ if that’s the case, but he can’t quite bring himself to feel excitement at the thought. Thinking of Crowley finding his soulmate coats his mouth with church dust and iodine. He can’t even make himself brave enough to ask the question.

“...It’s alright.” Crowley finally says after several minutes of silence, only filled by the far-off impact of bombs and the hum of the awful flying war machines in the skies. “I’m not bothered by it Aziraphale.” He sets the hat down on his thighs again. “Describe it to me?”

“It’s on the top shelf towards the back. It has a bit of a pattern to it, erm, not sure you’d be able to see it. Squarish, but the top is grooved, and peaked like a very shallow pyramid.” He tries to swallow around his heart. “So, you still don’t…?”

“Still no change,” Crowley says around a rather strained smile.

Aziraphale nods, his useless clay heart twisting and losing all semblance of form. What’s the point in being relieved? There’s a snap, and a full tea set appears on the floor beside him. The green tin with it’s peacock-eye pattern sitting there as described. Pot steaming and already brewed, two mugs poured and steaming. Aziraphale passes one up to Crowley. “Thank you my dear.”

He opens the top of the venerable teapot and removes the strainer and the tea leaves on top of it, setting them aside to let them cool. He flicks a sideways glance up at Crowley, who is clutching his mug with both of his hands. His cheeks flare with heat again. It would be so easy to just put his hand on Crowley’s knee, slide the other up a trouser leg that isn’t actually real… 

_"You have a soulmate." Crowley frowns down at him in confusion, mug placed to one side. His fingers drag down Aziraphale's cheek with careful study._

_“So what if I do? Why do you care?” He frowns back and pushes himself up onto the sofa beside Crowley._

_“What kind of question is that?!" The demon takes a half scooch back and braces his hands on Aziraphale's shoulder. Trying to restore the distance that has come between them all these years._

_Aziraphale moves another reckless inch forward. "What it sounds like." His hand rests on Crowley’s thigh, just where it meets his hips. He bends in, shrinking the space between them, aiming his mouth for Crowley’s slack lips. He can taste the tea on them and a hint of smoke underneath. The misshapen lump of clay in his chest hits his ribcage a moment later as the demon surges to life and kisses him like he’s the only thing that matters. There’s the faintest tang of bitter charcoal as a wicked tongue wends its way inside his mouth, but that just makes it taste sweeter. This stolen thing between them._

_Those long, impossible legs clamp around his waist as Crowley leans back, pulling him down. Aziraphale lets his hands trail down them, finding those feet once again, holding them and healing them with holy blue that doesn’t hurt Crowley. His mouth buzzes as Crowley moans his relief and gratitude directly against his soft palate._

_A set of sharp hips rise up, pressing against his own. A hard length presses against his hip, and he rubs himself shamelessly into the sensation. He swallows down a wet groan—_

"Aziraphale?"

Millennia of practice keep him from leaping out of his skin. But only just.

“Oh! So sorry my dear,” Aziraphale’s cheeks burn hot. “The tannin in the tea leaves should help. Draws out the pain and helps keep it clean.” He tries not to look at Crowley’s legs. Dangerous thoughts lie that way. He dresses Crowley’s feet in the treated bandages. The only real stitch of fiber on him.

_Just breathe. Just breathe and don’t think of Efforts or clothes or anything. You are above this. He is your friend._ Aziraphale bites his lip as he takes the cooled tea leaves and starts to layer them in under the next round of bandages. _I think he is anyway. I think we were. I hope we are again._

A friend who has never indicated that he wants a relationship with anyone, much less Aziraphale.

“Hey, um,” Crowley says, his grip around the mug finally relaxing as his toes disappear from sight. “I just wanted to say… uh, y’know.” He casts his gaze furtively around the room, Aziraphale knows what it is he can’t say. It isn’t demonic. “For doing this. You didn’t have to.”

“Well, I wanted to.” Aziraphale softly holds one of those feet between his palms. They seem so delicate, despite their size. “I only wish I could take care of it now, properly.”

There’s the sound of creaking leather as Crowley shifts his hips in place. “Yeah, neh-nah. Like I said. It’ll be fine. Human way is more than alright.”

Aziraphale nods, continuing the process. Slowly, he patches up those feet, taking care not to bandage them too tightly. 

“Could be worse,” Crowley observes to fill the silence. “Could be bleeding buckets all over your carpet and staining the floorboards.” For the gravity of the wounds, there’s little blood. All of it burned away, just leaving behind browned and blackened skin in its wake.

Blood turns brown too. Aziraphale is still fascinated at how it happens. How something so bright and vibrant and full of life turns dull. His heart clenches painfully around a knife’s edge. _Of course, if Crowley has his way he'll be less than a bloodstain. No trace left at all._ Just a painful, enduring absence.

“There are worse things,” Aziraphale whispers with authority. _Do you know what it was like? Wondering if I was alone? If you were already gone? Wondering if I’d never see you again? It felt so foolish sometimes, keeping spaces open for you when you never came to fill them. Gaps in the wards, spaces on chairs, sentences to be finished. I’ve never been to Hell but it has to be that. It has to be not knowing._

“Aziraphale?” Had his name ever sounded more beautiful or infuriating than in this moment? Spoken with a mouth he hasn’t kissed and thought was lost forever. The same mouth that had asked him the unthinkable in so little words.

The angel stares resolutely at the ground and lets the anger pass. Lets it bleed out through his aching, battered wings. No. _No._ He will not condemn himself back into the Hell of Not Knowing. _No matter what we were and what we aren’t, he’s back. He’s here. That’s what’s important._

“Angel?”

He blinks fiercely. He wants to scream the words choking in his throat. _I missed you!_ They echo around his own head. Too raw and painful to speak out loud. Too heavy and too much for this tentative renewal.

He won't let Crowley become a bloodstain, or less than one.

“One moment,” Aziraphale says huskily, gathering himself. He stares resolutely at his knees before he reaches out to tuck in the last end of a piece of gauze. “How are your feet feeling? Better?”

Two bandage-covered feet turn and rotate carefully. “Yeah, I think so."

"Any discomfort? You'd tell me if you were having some sort of reaction wouldn't you?" Aziraphale fusses with his ring.

Crowley snorts. _"Please._ 'S a cakewalk compared to boiling sulphur and the crucibles of Hell! As if a little iodine can hurt me."

The angel winces. "No I, I suppose not." He clears his throat, "But is it _helping?_ Are the bandages too tight? How are you feeling?" Part of him is irrationally afraid that Crowley will slowly dissolve before his eyes. A delayed reaction to all that holy energy.

Crowley manages to school his tongue enough to cluck it at Aziraphale. "Didn't I tell you not to fuss? It's _fine._ You did a bang up job. It's not too tight. Feet are still hot and sting like I've stepped into a patch of Jerusalem thorns, but it's definitely better."

A jolt runs up Aziraphale’s spine. "Oh! I know!" He reaches out and takes Crowley by the ankle again, lifting his calf even higher than before. Crowley slumps backwards against the couch, knocked off-kilter. 

"Augh! What's the big idea!?"

Aziraphale ignores him and leans in close, almost as if he were intent on kissing Crowley's feet—and wouldn't that be something? He purses his lips and blows a thin stream of arctic air from Crowley's heel, up the sole of his foot and then along his toes. There’s a strangled, shattered noise from Crowley followed by the sound of nails against leather.

“Ghhshk!”

Aziraphale pauses, having just drawn in another breath, lips poised as if to whistle. He lifts his eyes up coquettishly, gives his head the barest questioning tip. 

Crowley lets out a plaintive whine, and then works his throat in an attempt to speak. “Guh! Hnk! Arighnneighy!”

Aziraphale furrows one brow, and tilts his head the other way, still questioning.

There’s another fruitless squeeze of air through Crowley’s voicebox, but then he just nods. Something warm answers in Aziraphale’s chest even as he leans down to blow another cool stream of air along the other’s feet.

“How is that?” he asks calmly, “Is that good?” There’s a frantic nodding from the serpent, his glasses in danger of slipping off the end of his nose. “Can you feel it?” He doesn’t mean for his voice to husk lower, just as he doesn’t mean to brush his thumb along the edge of Crowley’s foot, on the sides above the margins of the worst burns.

Crowley nods mutely again.

“Oh, wonderful,” Aziraphale smiles and does it again, lingering at the ball of Crowley’s foot this time. “Is your foot cooling down at all, my dear?”

“Y-yeah.” It sounds like his teeth are sealed together with tar.

“Marvelous,” Aziraphale wiggles happily in place, pleased with himself for being so clever. He grasps Crowley behind his other heel and lifts the other foot, and repeats the same motion. One of Crowley’s hands clamps over his mouth, but it does little to stifle the door-hinge protest emitting from deep within his chest. Aziraphale pretends not to notice how Crowley shudders within his grasp. He can’t help the corner of his chest that wishes it was from more than relief. He drags out the next stream of chill air as long as possible, going excruciatingly slow.

As the final puff of air dissipates, Aziraphale looks up that long, wiry leg to the heap of angles and sharp suit lines trying to breathe on the couch. Crowley is sprawled over on one side, more boneless than he’s ever looked, and chest visibly heaving through his jacket.

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale says quietly, setting Crowley’s foot down with the utmost care. “Did I overdo it?”

Crowley makes an incredulous, questioning noise in response.

“Only… I know you aren’t _really_ a snake, but I do know how you feel about the cold.” Aziraphale twists his fingers nervously.

Crowley lets out a rather desperate, high-pitched peal of laughter before cutting himself off abruptly.

“Yeah. Yeah! No. ‘S fine. ‘S fine. ‘S all fine! _Super_ fine, me. Never been more fine, thanks!” He pushes himself upright, elbows resting on his knees, passing his hat back and forth between his hands. “Uh… Yeah. So that was. That.” He drags a hand through his hair and it looks delightfully disheveled. Aziraphale can’t help but notice that Crowley looks a bit peaked.

“Are you sure?” There’s color in his cheeks to match Crowley’s, he’s sure.

“Oh _yeah_ ,” Crowley lowers his voice and lets his tone get serious. Or mock-serious, maybe. “Quite sure. ‘S just. Uh. Y’know. Big, um, big temperature difference. Sort of…” he trails off and makes a gesture to suggest the blades of a blender with one hand.

“I see,” Aziraphale lies politely, not seeing at all.

Crowley coughs lightly and rocks a little in place, shoving his glasses back up on his nose properly. “Yeah. So.”

_No. Don’t leave, not yet._ _Let me keep you._

“Have you been back in London long?” He asks the question lightly, anything to avoid sounding like he’s making an accusation.

“Not long. ‘S only been a few weeks maybe. Been spending most of that time in France, got some stuff in motion over there. Not quite uprooted and relocated yet. Gotta find some new digs.” Crowley rubs the back of his neck, and a fraught silence settles between them.

_Silence_ , Aziraphale realizes. Crowley realizes it too. He speaks again after it stretches heartbeats longer than it should.

“Seems like it’s over,” Crowley nods towards the windows at the outside world, spinning his hat nervously.

“Yes,” Aziraphale bites his lip. _I should have said no,_ but he can tell by his wings it's the truth. The angel sighs and lets them relax. Tension melts from between his scapulae as they no longer stretch to their fullest, most protective capacity.

“Guess I ought to be going.” Crowley leans down and curves two of those long, clever fingers just inside the heels of his shoes to drag them over.

“Oh, there’s really no need to—”

“I think I need to,” Crowley says quickly. The words are firm, but not sharp. The disappointment punctures him all the same. The most minor of demonic miracles are employed to make the shoes slightly larger to accommodate his foot dressings.

“Oh, I… yes I see, of course. My apologies.” Aziraphale stares down at his hands and fusses with his ring once more. _Won’t you stay? There’s a space for you here, don’t you see? I can change it if you don’t like it! I can’t bear it if you won’t slot back into place._

“Nah, don’t say that. Just, nnh, y’know. ‘S been a lot. Bombs and things. Bit tired. Fancy a kip. Need to take care of a few… things.” He is deliberately not looking at Aziraphale as he reverse-slouches back onto his feet. It feels like he’s trying to make an escape. 

“Naturally, naturally,” Aziraphale says faintly, his hands fussing at his vest before getting to his feet himself. Crowley shuffles from foot to foot before moving towards the front of the shop. Aziraphale follows him, hopelessly trapped in his orbit. _I missed you. I missed you. I missed you. Please don’t leave again. Please. Don’t you know you’re the missing tome in a fully-stocked shelf?_

As Crowley’s hand comes to rest on the latch, the anxious words bubbling up inside him burst out.

“Will I see you?”

There’s a long, awful pause, and Aziraphale hates himself for asking—starts to pull back the question—but then Crowley looks back at him with a terribly gentle smile before he can get out a single sound.

“Yeah, ‘course.”

His heart resumes the entirely unnecessary task of beating once again. “Oh, I, oh that’s—that’s very, yes, well! I’ll—I’ll call you?”

Crowley laughs. “I’ll set up a telephone line, first thing.” 

He can’t even feel foolish right now, his heart is so bright and full. “Wonderful, I look forward to it. Good night, my dear. Mind how you go.” The serpent gives another nod, and then slips out the door.

And just like that, Crowley is gone. The bookshop feels wretchedly empty. Colder, sharper than ever after he’d gotten used to the sensation, and yet as Aziraphale slumps against a nearby shelf it is with shaky, palpable relief. He’s trembling like a new-legged fawn as his heartbeat pounds at his temples.

_He’s back._

Crowley is back in his life. _He’s going to come back. I’m going to see him again._ He’s dizzy with it, yet his chest aches at being parted again so soon.

How could such a brief encounter possibly fill the space he’d left open for seventy nine years? Aziraphale traces their steps again, fingertips tracing anywhere Crowley had touched. Anything to prolong the sensations of incidental contact. And not so incidental.

He stands in the doorway to the back room and inhales deeply, another ache in his chest as that smell of scorched phosphorus and that familiar cologne of ginger, sandalwood, and nutmeg floods his nose. _I’d forgotten what you smelled like. What it was like to have you here. How much your very presence made this place feel like home._

“I wish you had stayed,” Aziraphale whispers. “Please stay, this time. I’ll do better.” He walks forward and brushes his fingertips along the leather of the sofa. _He was really here._ After keeping the couch untouched for so long it still hardly seems real. He still can't quite bring himself to sit in it. He sinks to his knees in front of the couch for a second time that evening. He brushes a hand over the space Crowley had been sitting. Sprawling like he owned it. There's still the barest kiss of heat to the leather.

He sighs and sits himself down, resting his back against the cushions and the base of the Chesterfield. The soft parts hit his aching shoulder blades just right.

_Well, at least you managed to keep yourself under control. Honestly. Allowing yourself to be affected while your friend is suffering! You'd think you'd change after more than a thousand years, honestly. It was Wessex all over again._

Wessex.

_Oh._

Memories tumble into place.

_That wasn't pain at all._ He sucks in a breath that catches in his lungs as he recalls those eyes, pupils huge and dark. The flush scrawled all over his face. (It breaks his heart that Crowley can't see himself in all his glory.) _How could I have forgotten?_ Aziraphale knows what Crowley's erection looks like, but he's never had any context for it.

_So that's what it looks like when you're…_ His stomach clenches with heat. He presses his face against his knees. He's unbearably hard in his trousers. A hand comes up to cover his mouth. _You had an erection while I… I had my hands all over you, kneeling at your feet._

Aziraphale’s resolve crumbles.

He drags his fingertips along his vest, eyes fluttering shut. It’s too easy, too easy to imagine how this night could have gone. _Should_ have gone in a just universe.

_“That was very kind of you.”_

Aziraphale reaches between his legs to palm himself, to cup his length through his trousers. Would he ever forget these moments? Would he ever look at Crowley and not remember the feel of their fingers brushing over the same piece of leather?

_“Little demonic miracle of my own." Crowley doesn't pull his hand away. Aziraphale is close enough he can catch a glimpse of those eyes behind umber lenses. The light of the fading fire illuminating them like the sun through a stained glass window. He can see Crowley blink. Several times. "Lift home?" He almost sounds casual but there's a genuine question there. Confusion creeping in at the edges._

_“Yes, please,” Aziraphale says, openly spellbound by the demon before him._

_“Right,” Crowley says after another moment, his hand still pressing along Aziraphale’s. The drag of skin along skin seems obscene after such a long absence. It cores through Aziraphale; cleaves through the years like a fleshing knife preparing a hide to cure._

_He follows Crowley, picking their way through the rubble to the car. That beautiful, dark car. Shiny as new. Aziraphale wonders if the stars reflect on the bonnet on a dark night, like water on a still lake._

_Aziraphale slides into the passenger side demurely, and Crowley closes the door. A moment later the serpent slides into the driver’s side, planting his hands on the wheel, his brows knitted together._

_He makes no move to start the car._

_“Crowley?” He can see auburn lashes blinking fiercely in profile. Crowley shakes his head, then pulls away his glasses. His hand comes up to cover his eyes, fingers and thumbs rubbing at his temples. “Crowley my dear, are you alright?”_

_“Something… something’s wrong,” Crowley shakes his head again. “My eyes…” He huffs out a bit of a laugh. “I mean they’re always a bit wrong, but there’s something… my vision’s gone a bit… funny.”_

_His heart beats wildly in his throat, hope singing in every thread of his body. “Funny?”_

_“Yeah,” Crowley drags his hand down his face. “‘S like… I can’t explain it, but it all looks a bit… different.” The demon trails off as he turns to face Aziraphale, his mouth falling open._

_Could it be…?_

_Aziraphale fumbles for his hat, holds it out to Crowley. “My dear, does this look… different to you somehow?” The ambient light is rather dim, but there’s just enough still to make out the pale, candle-flame gold of the satin band there._

_Crowley slowly reaches between them, plucking the hat from Aziraphale’s hands as though it’s something far heavier. He turns it over, moving it to catch more of the light. “This wasn’t…” Crowley looks down at his own chest and makes a noise of surprise. He pulls out his tie and holds it in his palm, a sliver of the satin glowing garnet red in the dark. “What is_ that!?” _His head snaps over to Aziraphale, a naked fear stamped over his face._

_Aziraphale covers his mouth, gasping into his hands, “Oh!”_ It’s foolish to be surprised. It’s his own fantasy, but he can’t help but revel in the thought of it. He kisses the fingertips of one hand, the other working his belt open. _“Oh… Crowley…" You can see._

_Aziraphale reaches between them, slipping the glasses down without removing them, so he can catch the gold above them. “Do you understand yet, darling?” His heart has never been this full and light at the same time. It flutters like an overactive butterfly._

_Crowley is silent for a long time before he speaks. “I never thought I’d ever find anyone, it’d been so long… why now?” Aziraphale’s hat has come to rest on a bony knee._

_Aziraphale stashes the bag behind his seat and reaches between them, cupping the demon’s face, “You know better than anyone not to question Her.” Because what else can it be after all this time? It’s a miracle most high, not one he could have done himself._

_Crowley makes a face, but his eyes flick down towards his bowtie. He reaches out, fingertips coming to rest on the sliver of shirt above his vest. “I thought this and your hat… were the same… but they’re…” Crowley moves his head from side to side, eyes squeezing shut. He pushes his sunglasses back up. “Sorry, just… ‘s lot all at once.”_

_Aziraphale’s heart twists in sympathy. “Oh, I know it is, my sunset.” He gently pulls Crowley forward and brings their foreheads to rest together. “I’ll help you. I didn’t have anyone when it happened to me, but I’ll help you through it.”_ He runs a fingertip over his lips, pretends they aren’t quite as plump and plush as his own. Transforms his mouth into someone else's with nothing but a bit of imagination.

_He traces his finger along Crowley's fig-flesh lips, drinking in the little hitch to his breath. He's never been so reckless or brave._

_“I always wanted it to be you,” the hushed admission sounds like holy confession. “Ever since I knew I could want such a thing.”_

_"Nh," Crowley seems frozen beneath his fingertip._

_"Crowley."_

_He flicks his gaze down to those bewitching, quiet lips. The most forbidden fruit, and he's tired of resisting temptation._

_He's never considered their first kiss might take place in an automobile. It feels right. Private, like they're in their own world._

_Crowley's lips taste sweeter than any fig, smokier than any Shiraz. He's absolutely done for as that delectable, wet mouth surrenders and opens up to him._

_Aziraphale reaches between them and knocks aside his hat so his hand can take residence on one angular knee. The other moves to cup the back of Crowley's head, deepening the angle of their kiss. His heart rate jumps as he feels a tentative hand brush against his inner thigh._ Aziraphale lets himself languidly stroke up and down the inseam of his trousers. His head is cradled by the cushions behind him. There's something truly pathetic about kissing and tonguing at his own fingers, but he's too far gone to consider something so inconsequential as dignity.

_At some point he becomes aware that he's gotten himself half perched in the demon's lap. Tempted as he is to slide fully into it, he doesn't fancy having the navigation wheel digging into his back. With Herculean determination and no small amount of reluctance he pulls away, shuddering at the desperate noise that crawls out of Crowley's lungs. He runs his thumb across a cheekbone that’s more like a knife’s edge dressed in skin. He pants his next words into Crowley’s mouth, “Take me home.”_

Shaking hands reach up and pull at his bowtie. It’s been a long while since he’s done this. His skin aches with years of unsatisfied hunger for touch. He hasn’t forgotten what it is like to burn with want. Once he figured out how to make his sex feel good, it had become an idle curiosity. A simple, pleasurable pastime. A pastime made better when thinking about his hereditary enemy’s winning smile and wicked mouth. That knowing, smirking twist of his lips that promised all.

He has wanted since that day at the park—long before their argument, even—has never stopped wanting, but he had tried indulging here and there. Tried stroking himself to orgasm and never quite managed the trick. Frustration and heartache burned more keenly than any pleasure to be brought to his nerves.

Because there was _fear_. The fear that he was making love to a ghost.

“Do you remember how to do this, Aziraphale?” He hopes so, after centuries of practice. He nervously tugs his collar loose and starts working the buttons free at his vest. Despite how desperate he feels, like he can crawl right out of his corporation’s skin and onto the ceiling like Crowley, he wants to savor this. It’s been long enough.

_The city passes in a dark blur. His fingers knead at one spare thigh. Crowley blinks fiercely, more than he has in all the millennia of knowing him put together, and shakes his head from time to time._

_“Don’t try to make sense of it yet,” Aziraphale gently brushes his knuckles along his cheek. “Just let it happen, my love.”_

Aziraphale squeezes his lip beneath his teeth, his eyes suddenly burning. He rubs a thumb over his eyes quickly and he hates the way his sniffle echoes back to him. It shouldn’t be possible for an angel to feel this small. This alone.

Desperately, he looks over at the table across from the sofa. At the bag of books. His heart flies up into his throat, carried there by waterlogged lungs. All of it as heavy as clay.

“Would that I were made of mud and you were made of me… Flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.” But that is not the stuff that angels are made of. He brushes away another tear and closes his eyes. He slides back into the car, back into a life that might have been theirs.

_“Crowley, your feet! Let me carry you inside.” Aziraphale hurries to let himself out of the car and scuttle as quickly as he can around the front. He bends down and scoops Crowley up in his arms, despite the demon’s token protests. “Now, now, none of that. You’re dealing with enough right now as it is. Let me help you. Oh… but I am excited for you. It’s truly wonderful to see all these things. Not that there’s anything wrong otherwise, but… but…” You’re so beautiful. He swallows the words, knowing it will only launch a thousand protests._

Aziraphale shudders as he finally opens the last button on his shirt. He _knows_ he can carry Crowley. He’s done it before, he could do it again. Yet the journey from the front door to the backroom in his mind feels longer than the muddy trails in Wessex. _I didn’t know how precious you were back then. What incomparable cargo I held in my arms._

_“I feel ridiculous,” Crowley grumbles half-heartedly around his breast bone. His arms are slung in an easy loop around Aziraphale’s neck._

_“Shouldn’t someone sweep the dashing hero off his feet?” He fixes Crowley with a smile and a ridiculous flutter of lashes that work far better than they should. That face burns scarlet, and turns away._

_“Hnmk.”_

_He slows his approach enough that Crowley can safely deposit the books onto a free side-table before carrying him back to that hallowed couch. The place he had kept empty and waiting for Crowley._

_So gently, he lays the other back on the sofa, shoes dangling over the edge. Aziraphale takes their overcoats, tossing them over his armchair and, after a moment’s thought, lights a small kerosene lantern. More steady than a candle and little more bright—though the burn of it is obscured by a mostly white vase. He can hear Crowley suck in his breath. Aziraphale adjusts the knob on the side, bringing the light down further. He can just see the gold-white drops of the lantern reflecting off Crowley’s glasses. “Don’t be afraid, my dear.”_

_The color that paints its way across Crowley’s cheek is truly awe-inspiring. Aziraphale shivers, he feels a rush of wind through his wings in the ether, every pinion standing on end._

_“Who’s afraid?” the demon croaks, and Aziraphale knows enough that Crowley is not meeting his gaze._

_“I should think… a lot of things are scary… when they’re new.”_

_“I’m a demon,” Crowley points out, lifting his chin with a defiant sneer. God he loves him for it. For all his impious, prideful, impetuous ways. “I’m supposed to be all about scary, it’s what I am.”_

_Aziraphale rests the lamp down on the world’s smallest end table beside his wingback chair. He stands at the end of the couch and starts to unlace Crowley’s shoes, the heat of them still palpable to the touch._

_“You fuss more than…. Something that fusses a lot.”_

_He tries to hide a laugh into his shoulder. He carefully prises those feet out of the shoes. “Socks need to come off too,” he lets his thumbs come to rest on the ball of Crowley’s feet, the rest of his fingers alighting on the top of his foot. It takes but a thought and they’re gone, falling away from Crowley’s body like black raindrops that disappear before hitting the ground._

_“This may hurt,” Aziraphale warns. “I’ll go slowly.”_

His cock twitches shamefully against the waistband of his pants. His thighs squeeze and press together. His skin is singing with anticipation. Aziraphale is already breathless as he slides his hand down into the space between his pants and fly.

_He summons the faint conduit of healing power. Touches that wellspring and lets the smallest sliver of it flow through his hands. The result is instantaneous. Crowley gasps out, hips arching up off the sofa, a moan following after. Aziraphale drops the connection immediately, face flushing._

_“Crowley? Are you alright? Did I hurt you?”_

_There’s a helpless, delirious sort of laugh that shakes Crowley by the chest as he turns to press his face into the tufted leather. “No. Not hurting. Definitely not that.”_

_“Oh, good,” Aziraphale breathes out, relieved. “Shall I continue?”_

_“Don’t think that’s a good idea, angel,” Crowley says quickly._

_“And whyever not? The state of your feet! I can’t leave you like this when you acquired such wounds on my account.”_

_“Nyehhh ‘s just… ‘s the opposite of hurting.” Crowley’s face, what little Aziraphale can make out of it, mashed as it is against the back of the Chesterfield, is fire apple red._

_“The opposite?” Aziraphale asks, trying to keep his voice calm._ He teases himself through the fabric, insufficient room for his hand to do any serious stroking.

_Crowley nods mutely, looking somewhat miserable._

_Aziraphale’s heart is beating very quickly. Like fingertips wildly striking a drum skin. “My dear, sweet sunset… Am I to understand… that you find,” the angel wets his lips as he carefully takes in his patient, “That these abilities are sexually stimulating?”_

_Crowley gives a whole body cringe, and pulls his feet out of Aziraphale’s grasp to curl up against the side of the couch. “I can’t… I’m not… I don’t do it on purpose. I understand if you don’t want to—we can do it the human way.”_

_“Nonsense.” Aziraphale rounds the corner of the arm of the sofa, and waits for Crowley to fold himself further in half so he can sit down. “In fact… I’d like you to show me… If you’re amenable.”_

Aziraphale lets out the smallest whimper, hand coming up to cover his mouth before sliding down to properly open his fly.

_Crowley half turns to face him. “You want—?” He cuts himself off with a strangled noise of disbelief._

_“My dear, if I can make you feel good as well as take care of you, why wouldn’t I want to do such a thing?” He gently takes hold of Crowley’s foot once more, still being as gentle as possible. He lifts his gaze and raises his brows._

_There’s the audible sound of Crowley swallowing. Aziraphale feels his skin tingle, struck by the notion that those golden eyes have swept up and down his form, like they’ve only just met. Like he’s never seen Aziraphale before._

_Then Crowley nods._

_Aziraphale calls back just the barest whisper of power, even less than before, and the desperate writhing of those hips threatens to take those feet away from his healing hands. He can feel the skin mending beneath them, even as Crowley tosses his head back in total ecstasy. Aziraphale shifts and settles between those legs. He can feel the press of an arch against his palm, where one of those spindle stork legs tries to kick out straight._

Aziraphale has himself in a firm grip now, only allowing himself short half-strokes towards the head of his cock. His throat constricts around nothing, but, oh, some ancient, primal, human-like part of him wishes Crowley were here, that he could swallow him down in an act of utter degrading devotion.

_“Ah, ah, none of that now, my dear.” He strokes his thumbs along the graceful instep, his hands cool and intractable. There’s something utterly fascinating about Crowley thrashing against him. The way he threatens to step into Aziraphale’s grasp like he’s about to invent the world’s most obscene carnival act. Instead his hips arch up, followed by an undulating stomach. He licks his lips, struck by the urge to see it all._

_“Crowley,” his voice is pitched low and urgent._

_“Nh! Y-yeah?” Crowley sounds like glass ready to break._

_“Get rid of this suit, sunset.”_

_There’s another laugh that morphs into a desperate whine, but Aziraphale banks his powers into the barest hum, the tiniest mote of power. Scarcely enough to reverse the damage from holding an overhot thermos. This, at last, seems to allow Crowley enough wherewithal to draw in his focus. His spine drops rather suddenly, and his breath seems to cease as he reaches up to clutch at his glasses for dear life._

_There’s a deliberate, shuddering exhale and the rest of Crowley’s clothes atomize into thin air—save for his hat tumbled on the floor. All he’s left with are a pair of sunglasses clutched to his chest._

_The Effort Crowley is sporting is identical to the one he’d had in Wessex all those years ago. The sight of it again, flushed and engorged because of something Aziraphale has done leaves him speechless._

_The serpent sends him a rather meaningful look and moves one of his feet to and fro, ever so gently reminding Aziraphale of his purpose. His mouth waters at the immediate bead of precome that gathers and drips onto Crowley’s skin just beneath his navel._

_Aziraphale adjusts his hands to cup Crowley’s heels, and the flare of power is back, and the angel sucks in a breath as his lover resumes his writhing. Good lord the noises Crowley makes. There’s a sibilant hiss stuck behind those teeth, trapped between raw, sexual moans. This is without a doubt the most filthy thing he’s ever done, yet the power in his hands is wholesome—healing. Nothing more than kindness._

It’s utterly reprehensible to use Crowley like this. Aziraphale knows this. It doesn’t stop him from imagining it in all its vivid glory. (Has it ever?) Doesn’t stop his hand from creeping lower and lower with every stroke along his shaft.

_“Crowley my dear,” he breathes, “Look at me?”_

_Half lidded eyes lift up to meet his, shiny and wet. "Oh," Crowley swallows, bucking up another moment later._

_"Are you alright, sunset?" He drags his fingertips up the soles of Crowley’s feet. They feel whole again, though a quick peek reveals that the skin there is still an angry red._

_Crowley nods. “Think so,” he chokes out. “How can you stand it? ‘S all so much… much…” He shakes his head with a laugh, “I dunno even what to call everything.”_

_“I’ll teach you,” Aziraphale promises. He gentles the power channeled through his hands and uses both palms on one of Crowley’s feet, sliding it between his hands to banish the last of the sunburn skin. He smiles as that healthy foot plants itself on the couch to arch his hips skyward. Aziraphale can’t help wiggling in place, the brush of those long legs utterly appealing against his waist._

_He smirks as he coaxes Crowley’s left foot into his grasp, and he applies a bit more power than is strictly necessary. There’s the sound of cracking glass and Crowley chucks aside the now-useless sunglasses, opting to bite his fist instead._

_“Pretty thing,” he breathes, “magnificent. I wonder if I could make you come from this? My hands all over your body, everywhere but your pretty, pretty cock. Would it be enough?”_

_“Ngh—noooo,” Crowley wails pathetically, belied by the way his cock twitches and leaks more clear fluid from the tip of it. “Mm, ah, uh-Aziraphale! Wanna feel you… please…”_

_“Don’t worry, my love,” Aziraphale soothes, finally letting the connection to his powers sever completely. Crowley’s hips drop again, his chest catching and shuddering wildly. “I won’t be so cruel. Besides,” he brushes up a pair of slender ankles, up those calves until he’s tickling the sides of Crowley’s knees, “I want to feel you too.”_

Aziraphale shivers, startled by his own imagination. Gracious… to give Crowley an orgasm with nothing but the touch of laying on hands? _Oh, I’m sure it would be spectacular._ He can’t quite recall where he was a moment ago in his fantasy, too lost in this other wildly appealing, distracting thought.

_“Aziraphale,” the gravely tone turns his insides into liquid gold. He drapes himself down over the demon, cupping a hand underneath Crowley’s head, thumb brushing over his razor-short hair. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen it this short. Not even in Rome. He pulls away as Crowley tries to close the distance to kiss him, and instead uses his hand to turn his lover’s head, until he’s looking at the back of the couch. “That,” Aziraphale intones directly below Crowley’s ear, “is brown.” He sucks a kiss against that soft skin, working his way down that sharp-cut jaw and then pressing in scorching kisses along the side of the other’s neck._

_“Thought it was a Chesterfield.”_

Aziraphale laughs, despite himself. It’s supposed to be in bad taste to laugh at one’s own jokes, but it doesn’t feel like his own through Crowley’s mouth.

_“Wicked thing,” he kisses him on the cheek, removing all possible sting from the words. “Specifically its ochre but brown is simple enough. It works.”_

_“Brown,” Crowley repeats, wonderingly._

_“Yes, you know the name, surely?”_

_Crowley nods minutely. “Yeah… names of colors are a lot less secret than they used to be. Have been ever since the printing press came on the scene.”_

_“Mm,” Aziraphale agrees, turning Crowley’s head again to properly kiss him. “Seems like it wasn’t that long ago where they were secrets held by priests and god-kings.”_

_"Tell me more," Crowley tugs at his sleeve. It feels like there's a direct line to his heart with that motion. "Let me feel you. Get this kit off."_

_Aziraphale helpfully names the colors of his clothes as he sits back and undresses himself. He passes Crowley every article of clothing, so he can run his hands over every thread and fibre. Tells him all the dye origins that he knows. Before he knows it he's naked, leather sticking to his skin._

_“So this…” he eyes Azirphale’s tan trousers warily, “and that are the same?” He glances at the leather beneath their skin._

_“Tan is sort of… a light brown. Same family but distant cousins.”_

_“Kissing cousins?” Crowley leens in hopefully with an outrageously lascivious smile. He grabs the serpent by the waist and flips him, so that their gloriously naked bodies crush together. He groans at the friction of their cocks rubbing against one another. He can feel the slickness gathering at the head of Crowley’s prick._

Aziraphale gentles his touch on himself, backing away from the edge. Indulges in the fantasy of snogging Crowley senseless. “I’d kiss you for hours,” he drags his teeth across his lower lips. "Years for every time I wanted to and didn't."

_Crowley is perfect like this. Warm and safe beneath him. Aziraphale has to fight the urge to pull out his wings and cover Crowley with them a second time that evening. They aren’t in a state to be seen, and he doesn’t want the other to fret. He draws back, parting their lips reluctantly._

_Aziraphale gently traces down one of those sharp cheekbones. “What changed? Certainly it wasn’t me.” He lowers his eyes, ashamed. He knows he can be… inflexible. Rigid._

His imagination stalls, and Aziraphale bites his lip. _Oh… is that why…?_ Of course. How _could_ anything have changed, if he’s still the same? Aziraphale curls up until his knees are pressed against the heartache in his chest. He tucks his face into the crook of his elbow, hiding his eyes. His stupid, awful, color-perceiving eyes.

He sits there for a long stretch of time. Faintly, he can hear the ticking of a clock on his desk in the other room mete out the seconds and the minutes. Abruptly, Aziraphale draws himself upright. Stands up and shucks his clothes with a brutal efficiency. Trousers pooling at his ankles, his pants following after. He can wallow later. He can pretend _now._

_“I did,” Crowley breathes. “I must have done. Missed you something fierce. Felt like I was missing something this whole time. Didn’t realize that it was all the color in the world.”_

_Aziraphale presses the most delicate kiss to the curve of Crowley’s neck, then one to his collarbone. “I can’t think of what I did to deserve this, but I’m… very glad that I did. If it’s even about deserving.”_

_“Aziraphale,” Crowley rubs urgently against his hip. He can’t help slipping his hands down Crowley’s waist to hold him still. He can feel the tremble of Crowley’s stomach, taut beneath his thumbs._

_He kisses his way down Crowley’s throat, almost punishing in intensity. The hitch in Crowley’s breath when he kisses the hollow of his neck makes him feel powerful in a way he’s never experienced. There’s the most appealing wiggle as he kisses down Crowley’s chest, and he can’t help but mirror it as he lets his mouth claim a peaked nipple. The tight nub flexes and shifts under his tongue in the most fascinating way. Crowley doesn’t seem especially moved—until Aziraphale sucks that flesh into his mouth and gives it a gentle squeeze between his teeth. The angel hums thoughtfully, alternating between short, sharp pulses and pressing against that hard bud with the tip of his tongue. A wholly decadent push and pull with his mouth and tongue that has the demon writhing beneath him. And because it seems too cruel to do otherwise, he lathes the same attention to the other side. There’s the most appealing twitches beneath him and broken noises spill from Crowley’s throat. Each one goes straight to his groin, sends an ache through his cock and lights a spark under his stomach._

Aziraphale moans, squeezes the base of his Effort. There’s leather sticking along his back. He chokes back a whimper at the thought of Crowley splayed out beneath him, hard and aching and wanting.

_“Look at you, all tickety-boo,” he traces along the edges of Crowley’s flushing skin, sitting back on his heels. He reaches down and runs a hand through that close-cropped hair. “I thought you were gorgeous from the moment I laid eyes on you. Such colors bound together. You have no idea how lovely you are. How bewitching you’ve been.” He leans down and kisses Crowley right on the snake mark on his temple. “Every time I see a flash of your hair in a crowd, my heart pounds so loud, it’s a marvel you’ve never heard it. If only you could see yourself how I’ve seen you through the ages.”_

_Crowley laughs breathlessly, “Don’t think I could do that without getting extremely creative with human anatomy and eyeball placement.”_

_Aziraphale tilts his head with a smile, “Oh… but I do believe I can.” A snap of his fingers is all it takes before a large mirror manifests across the room. The kind to be found in fussy old ballet studios at the top of rickety flights of stairs. It reflects them back with only the mildest of distortion, though the bookshelves look like they go on for miles this way._

_He lays down over Crowley, fingers skating down between them. Past his navel, over the knobs of those hips, side-stepping the clearly eager cock between those legs. He traces questioning fingerprints over the swell of a thigh. “What would you like, my dear?”_

_“Anything,” is the immediate response. “Everything.”_ It’s too tempting to picture the ever aloof and cool Crowley as needy. Wanting. His heart is as weak as his flesh.

_“Alright,” he whispers into Crowley’s neck. “Want you to watch. Look at yourself.” He slicks his hand with nothing more than a thought and reaches behind the other’s balls. Teasing the soft skin of his perineum before sweeping his slick fingers over that tight rim of muscle. Aziraphale has done this to himself before, he knows how to tease. Spread the slick. Massage it into that ring and gently bully the very tip of his finger in at first. It's like an impossibly tight kiss around his knuckle. That muscle has a thickness inside. Like a girdle. He could toy with the sensitive entrance here and be wholly satisfied. Just to explore the sensations._

_He works in another finger, pressing against the wall of tight heat, that promise of friction._

_"Are you watching yourself?" He scatters kisses along the lunar highlands of his blissed out face._

_"Yeah…"_

_"Your hair… is the loveliest thing. I've never forgotten how it looks, spread across a pillow."_

_"Wessex," Crowley grunts, arching his hips and angling for more. For something deeper._

_"Oh you must feel terribly empty. don't you my pet?"_

_Crowley lets out a truly pathetic keening noise._

_"Are you ready?"_

_"Yes! Yes! Yes, please!"_

_"Then you can wait," he whispers with relish as he slides his fingers in deeper. "Let me, ah, let me learn you first.”_

This really _is_ a fantasy. Aziraphale is trembling down to his knees. He has to squeeze his own wrist with near-bruising strength to stop from wildly pumping himself and finishing in a complete frenzy. He whines as he imagines stretching Crowley inch by inch, finding the pressure and angles to make him turn into jelly. Watch the parade of color along his skin. Whisper all sorts of gentle endearments he knows the demon would never abide.

_It’s easy enough to pile an unresisting Crowley in his lap. A loose tumble of muscle and tangle of edges. He shifts closer to the edge of the couch, and spreads his legs. He grips Crowley by the hips and angles him into position, bracing himself for the imminent intrusion._

_Aziraphale can't resist a bit more teasing. He rubs the dark, slick glans of his cock against Crowley entrance. He presses in at a shallow angle, refusing to go any further than his cockhead. At first he just thrusts the very tip of himself in and out of that incredible tightness, gasping in tandem with his lover. In and out, fingers squeezing Crowley’s proud hip bones._

_He pulls out until the widest part of his cockhead is stretching Crowley out. He adjusts his grip, shimmying his palms down until he can reach with his thumbs and spread Crowley's buttocks. The sight of it is utterly obscene. Worth the ache that starts building in his hand. Aziraphale shifts his hips in place, scarcely moving at all. There's a desperate, high pitched whine followed by the sudden sharp sensation of Crowley's nails digging into his hand. There’s a surprising fierceness to his next hiss._

_“Aziraphale—”_

_“Yes, darling?” He lays an unconcerned kiss to Crowley’s spine, pushing himself back in. Just enough that the entire swell of his cockhead is just past that tight band of heat and tension, squeezing just underneath it instead._

_“C’mon Aziraphale, fuck me!” He snarls and tries to thrust down, but Aziraphale uses his implacable, immeasurable strength to prevent Crowley from gaining even an inch. He continues the tortuous slide, the intoxicating tease._

_“Such a mouth on you,” he chides, though he can’t deny how breathless he sounds._

_Crowley tosses his head back with a strangled groan of frustration, but every time he tries to thrash those beautiful, narrow, serpent’s hips, Aziraphale holds him steady. His palms absorb all the force Crowley tries to push against them. It’s torture for him too, but he’s drunk with it. This absolute control of the pace where he has all the leverage. Crowley suspended at the end of his prick with no more than he means to give._

_“Aziraphale!” The sight of Crowley’s throat, stretched and vulnerable in the mirror is the most erotic thing he’s ever seen. He can see the slick of precome shining in the mirror between his quivering legs. a clear thread of it hangs from the shiny, apple red tip of Crowley's glans, threatening to snap and make a mess of the floor. His resolve almost crumbles then and there. “C’mon! Angel! You know you want it,” the rise and fall of those lean ribs is captivating._

_“I do know,” he breathes. It takes every fiber of his decaying willpower to give the softest nudge instead of pistoning his hips up._

_“Angel!” It’s almost a sob. Aziraphale’s chest goes warm, and the weight of the demon in his hands goes a little slack, though it’s scarcely a burden for him to support more of Crowley’s non-existent weight. “Angel, angel, angel, please!”_

Aziraphale shudders all over. He’s never heard such desperation out of Crowley, he’s not sure where he conjured such a sound from. His heart is racing in his chest, like it’s trying to head for destinations unknown. With or without the angel.

_“Alright, my love,” he coos softly, brushing his nose affectionately along Crowley’s back. “Let me, darling, let me.” He shifts his grip ever so slightly. “I promise, I’ll take care of you.” There’s the sweetest, tiniest sound of surrender that falls from those honeysuckle lips. He pulls Crowley down with excruciating slowness. He wants to savor this first time for all it’s worth._

_Aziraphale kisses his spine, between his shoulders. “Look at you, sunset.” His throat goes tight. “Red and gold and sinking so prettily down on me.” It’s unthinkable, unpardonable that those eyes are closed for this. He nips gently at the base of Crowley’s scapula, forcing him to obey. His skin tingles all over. Like the promise of lightning in a thunderhead. Like an invisible wing brushing over his skin._

_“Look at you,” Aziraphale says again, his voice hallowed and reverent. Every line of Crowley is gorgeous. From the arch of his neck, down to the way his feet desperately try to wind around Aziraphale’s ankles, knees spread as wide as they’ll go. The way his hair burns copper in the lantern light is nothing short of magical. Their eyes meet in the reflection and… oh. Aziraphale couldn’t make eyes half so brilliant with the finest gold leaf in all creation. They burn bright and almost holy—enough so that Aziraphale wonders if this is how Crowley’s eyes have always been. If this is how he was made as an angel._

Aziraphale comes with a gasp, messily, all over his hand. Sooner than he means to. He shudders, curling in around his fist, picturing slow sensuous lovemaking. Hours of it fly by in his imagination as his body draws out its release. He whimpers as he squeezes himself, wringing out one last, weak rope of come to the thought of fucking up into Crowley with abandon. Watching his pleasure blossom all over his chest.

Aziraphale catches his breath. The faint smell of iodine is what brings him out of his stupor. He’d been so wrapped up in his fantasy, he’d forgotten there were still supplies to clean up. He eyes the basins, looks down at the mess on his skin and the floorboards. He heaves a sigh and awkwardly gets to his feet. Aziraphale debates long and hard with himself about the merits of cleaning everything with a minor miracle, and then decides against it. Best to conserve what power he can. He does deign to summon a tea towel to wipe the come from his stomach and hand, dabbing at his thighs as well. He slips back into his pants and trousers. Aziraphale throws on an undershirt as well before securing his suspenders back in place. He takes the basin of ceramic in one hand, steel in the other, and walks over to his sink. As he cleans up he can’t help drifting back into the comfortable fantasy.

Tender, lingering touches, sweet kisses, and gentle words. There’s a very real flutter of excitement in his belly as he pictures it. The excitement of showing Crowley his illuminated manuscripts in their full glory, watching that beautiful, beloved face as he traces his fingers reverently over precious parchment. Aziraphale would keep the lights dim, of course, so as not to overwhelm but... 

_“Oh! Crowley! You’ve never seen a sunrise! We still have time!” He hastily starts moving about the bookshop, getting a wicker basket and moving to his venerable old Frigidaire that’s never quite empty despite all the rationing. He packs all sorts of food. Cherries, tomatoes, celery, radishes. All of the brightest food to tempt Crowley with. He’s determined to show the demon what he’s been missing all these years._

Aziraphale smiles, and puts both basins away. It would be just like him to get carried away like that. Overpacking. He wonders how far Crowley’s Bentley can go. Where would it take them? Sussex? Cambridgeshire? Scotland? _Perhaps Kent._ That would be lovely. A rolling hilltop in the North Downs. Somewhere with a view of the sea. He can picture it so clearly. Crowley’s automobile parked a short hike away. The sky still dark and still lit by stars in a sea of navy blue. A blanket spread beneath their knees.

And, oh, to watch Crowley take in the pale dawn. The gentle waves of color blending smoothly into one another. The burst of golden rays through the clouds. To watch the demon be powerless to do anything but be moved in the face of such beauty. He loses himself again.

_Crowley’s skin is lit up the most lovely red-hued gold from the dawn. The faint freckles on his skin are thrown into sharp relief. Aziraphale leans over and tries to kiss them off his skin, they’re too darling and too dear. Crowley sits, utterly still and mesmerized, glasses long abandoned._

_“‘Mazing… Is it always like this? It’s so… I never thought it’d be gentle. When y’hear people talk about it, you know? Always talking about daybreak and the crack of dawn… but there’s no edges… ‘S soft.”_

_It’s like his chest has become a hearth, home to a merry, crackling fire. “I find sunsets to be a little more… intense, usually. Perhaps that’s just a matter of opinion, or luck of the draw.”_

_Aziraphale reaches over and gently swipes a thumb along Crowley’s lash line, wiping away a tear that gleams gold. Crowley doesn’t blink. Hasn’t blinked for twelve minutes. He lets a hand come to rest on Crowley’s thigh, tucking his head against a bony shoulder._

He picks up the tea tray from the floor, and brings that back to the kitchenette. What could be a more perfect ending to such a fantasy?

_“Crowley?” There’s a questioning sound in response. “Let’s go off together.” Aziraphale holds his breath at his own daring._

_The demon laughs, “I thought we did go off together.”_

_Aziraphale slowly shakes his head, “No, I mean… Take me away from all this.”_

_“Anywhere you want to go,” Crowley promises instantly. Aziraphale reaches with his free hand and picks out a cherry, nibbling the flesh daintily away from the stone._

_“Take me to the ends of the Earth,” he sighs dreamily, setting the pip aside on the corner of a napkin. He reaches for another, so dark it’s nearly black, and holds it up to Crowley’s lips._

_“To the ends of the stars and back,” is the glib reply before sharp teeth pierce the flesh. Dark, delicious juice staining his lips. A tongue flicks over his fingertip playfully._

_“You promise?” Aziraphale scrapes his own front teeth over the hard, pale seed at the center, peeling away what flesh is left. The second seed joins the first. He notes the way Crowley’s eyes follow his hand._

_“Course.”_

_Aziraphale pulls away just enough to jab Crowley lightly with his shoulder. “Be serious. Don't tease me.”_

_“I’m not! I’m being perfectly serious. Let's go off together, yeah? Just like you said. Run away somewhere. No one will even notice us.”_

Aziraphale pauses in front of his pantry, arm raised to replace the green tin of black tea. His heart is beating faster than it ever has in his long life. “Go off… together?”

_“It's a big universe. Bet there's lots of colors up in the planets out there no one's even seen before,” Crowley sounds practically giddy at the thought._

_"Yes," Aziraphale breathes. "Yes, wherever you go I'll follow. Let’s be the first to see them.”_

_Crowley shakes his head, the very fringes of his short bangs skating across his forehead. “Don't follow. By my side—you can be my navigator.”_

_“Alright,” Aziraphale says with a foolish grin, “but first we'll travel Earth. And I'll spread you out on the most beautiful hill and make love to you under the sunset sky, sunset."_

_Crowley leans back with a smile, wrapping an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulder, pulling them down together. “Seems like it might be worth getting a head start there. I can’t think of a prettier hillside, can you?”_

_“Oh I don’t know,” he flutters his lashes even as he slips a hand inside Crowley’s jacket, “There might be a superior hill in the South Downs somewhere. Or in Scotland.”_

Aziraphale sinks into an armchair, dazed and unable to think of anything else. He ghosts his touch over his Effort through his trousers. His eyes settle onto the couch. The place Crowley was sitting not even an hour ago.

_“Well, seems to me, there’s no point in wasting this one—or this sunrise, for that matter. It’s my first time, after all.” There’s a rakish wink that causes his heart to skip and tumble like a duck on ice._

_“Fiend,” Aziraphale whispers, landing a kiss on his neck._

_This is dangerous,_ Aziraphale knows. Indulging in fantasies of the flesh is one thing, but this? Fantasies of attachment? _But really, what is the harm?_ He bargains with himself, _what’s the harm in imagining what it would be like to run off with Crowley? After all…_

It’s not like it’s ever going to happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~Haha remember when I thought this chapter was going to be short?~~ Two updates in the same month!? It's more likely than you think!! And with this we are officially past the halfway mark!!
> 
> Noodlefrog continues to be the best!! Ilu you funky little amphibious pasta.
> 
> BTW pls do not take any of these actions I described as medical advice. While they were researched, this was still the dark ages for burn treatment and these are immortal, eldritch beings with reality bending power. So don't. Don't do that.
> 
> IDK when the next update will be. ~~I have a stronger idea for what ch 7 is about, so I might write that first and then write ch 6 lol.~~ I have chapter 6 outlined and I can tell it is going to be a Doozy of a Chapter. Probably like... 20k minimum... on the plus side chapter 7 is pretty close to done with a first draft? So at least the update after that shouldn't take as long. So sorry about the wait in advance but hopefully the long update next time makes up for it!
> 
> We shall see! I do have a collection of ideas for this universe as well that don't fit the structure of what I'm doing that I've set off to one side. I'll probably put them in their own separate story as chapters or make this into a series at some point. In my head I'm calling it Prismatic/Prismatic Slivers.

**Author's Note:**

> I am [still on the hellsite that is Tumlbr as liquidlyrium](https://liquidlyrium.tumblr.com/) if you want to yell at me about Good Omens or whatever.


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